Pater Vero
by jugglequeen
Summary: Pater Vero is Latin and translates into "Father's Truth", and this is what we get in this story - Mulder's true feelings about Scully's pregnancy, his return from the dead, William being born and lost, and so much more... Prequel to this story: Mater Semper Certa Est
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

 _ **Author's note:** This story fits in chapter 4 of a story called "Mater Semper_ _Certa Est", posted a few months ago. Although it's not absolutely necessary to read it to get the essence of this one, I recommend it. What you get here is Mulder's reaction to what happens in the other story, which mainly focuses on Scully, as the title tells you._

 _Enjoy and don't hesitate to tell me what you think!_

 _ **Disclaimer:** None of the characters belong to me, they belong to Fox and Chris Carter, and although I'm thankful he invented Mulder  & Scully, I can't forgive him he begrudged them longer streaks of happiness. Season 11, if it ever becomes a reality, better be good! _

* * *

It's out.

Scully takes a deep breath through her nose and lets the air flow out through her mouth very slowly, carefully watched by Mulder, who heaves a sigh of relief.

It's finally out.

After having struggled with the painful memories all by herself for 15 years, sublimating them most of the time so the pain doesn't eat her up, she's finally told her story to the two people who ought to know, William and himself. Mulder has waited for her to confide in him for years, and now he's relieved she's finally brought herself to open up to him, although he knows that if it hadn't been for William, she might not have. But he doesn't care.

That she's allowed her memories to resurface, digging them out from somewhere deep inside her, is all he cares about. She's overcome her fear of dealing with them, that's all he ever wanted. What's most important to Mulder, though, is her willingness to admit that she's having unresolved issues. The way she fell silent after having said so much shows him the vulnerability she usually hides not only to the outside world but also to him. Even now, she tries to stay in control of her emotions.

Mulder watches her in awe. He knows her too well to not see how she struggles to keep her composure in front of William, probably in front of him, too. The way she presses her lips together, how she avoids his gaze and forces a smile that doesn't reach her eyes. Her fingers are entwined so fiercely that her knuckles are white.

The three of them are sitting together for a while after Scully ended her story. Nobody is saying a word. William is deeply touched obviously. Mulder's quite sure the boy hadn't really known what to expect when he had asked what it was like for his birth mother when he was gone. He seems to be a bit overwhelmed now and unable to deal with seeing her so upset and churned up inside. One day, when he's a father himself, he'll completely understand what Scully had gone through, Mulder ponders. He knows that you have to be a parent to know what the bond to your child consists of, how solid and everlasting the love for your own flesh and blood comes to be. At least, that's the way it happened to him. Mulder had never thought of becoming a father before William's arrival in his life. He had a very distant relationship with his own father and hadn't been blessed with experiencing fatherly love first-hand. In addition to that, he'd spent so little bonding time with William. Even under these odd circumstances, he's felt nothing but all-encompassing and primal love for his son from the start. He'd been surprised by his own ability to feel that way.

Maybe fathers can't even imagine a mother's connection to her baby. Men cannot begin to fathom what it's like to feel a new life grow inside yourself, to carry it in your womb for nine long months, to bring it to life at enormous pains, and to nurture it with your own body. It must be an overwhelming yet fulfilling experience. Every new life is a miracle, but in Scully's case, it was so much more than that. It was like a rainbow after a storm, a promise for the normal life she'd always wanted deep down for herself. It symbolized her way out of the X-Files and the darkness they dragged along. Having to decide to give her baby up, her hope, was the cruelest thing Scully could've been asked to do, but she did it nonetheless. This tiny and fragile-looking woman had survived what must have been like a natural catastrophe descending upon her, a tornado which lifted her up, swirled her around, and dropped her down somewhere else, in a spot completely different and antagonistic. A spot where she ceased being a mother.

"Wow," William mumbles into the silence now. "I had no idea my adoption was so dramatic."

What have you been thinking, Son? That she gave you up just like that? That is was anything but traumatic for her? She would've given her life for you. _I_...would've given my life for you. Well, that's what we did more or less, because after you were gone, our lives weren't the same anymore.

Of course, Mulder isn't saying any of this aloud. It'd put a pressure on the boy he wouldn't be able to cope with and he surely doesn't deserve. He hadn't thrown the dark shadows on their lives, it had been the Cigarette Smoking Man and his cronies. His own biological father had done this to Scully and him. This is something he shares with his son. They both have a biological father and a father who raised and educated them. He's glad, though, and thankful, that thinking of his begetter, William obviously doesn't feel the same strong urge to spit out like himself.

"Thank you, Mom. I've been waiting to hear this for as long as I can remember."

"I know," Scully says. She sounds so powerless all of a sudden, Mulder realizes as his stomach cringes. Whatever has driven her earlier is gone. Her whole demeanor, as well as her empty eyes tell him how exhausting this has been for her, that she couldn't have gone on any longer.

William gets up and kneels in front of Scully, who is still too overwhelmed to move from her chair. He gives her a somewhat clumsy hug, being still in the process of building a relationship with his birth mother. He's closely watched by his biological father, who sees that as much as the boy is grateful for finally knowing about the circumstances of his adoption, it's not easy for him to cope with it. He rises and an awkward silence occurs between them. Nobody knows what else to say.

"I, uhm... I think I should be looking whether Mom,...I mean my adop-tive...uh Helen,... I mean, whether...Helen needs help with dinner," William stammers. He nervously rakes through his hair and leaves the porch without looking at either of them.

When her son has closed the screen door behind him, Scully leans her head against the chair's backrest, closes her eyes and swallows.

"You okay?" Mulder asks.

"Uh huh."

She doesn't sound okay, though, neither does she look okay. Mulder deplores that she'd never deemed him worthy of knowing how she spent those last hours with William and about her ordeal afterward. But he has to be fair, she said she had wanted to confide in him but had lost the strength to do so along the road. He hasn't forgotten how they unlearned to talk with each other on the run as the everyday struggles to remain undetected and alive had overshadowed every effort whatsoever to deal with other personal emotional issues. And when they had finally settled down, he hadn't been a good listener anymore. She'd been worried more about him than he about her, he's had to acknowledge to himself, until one day he'd retreated so much from her that there was nothing else for her to do but leave him.

Fuck that damn depression!

Why hadn't he agreed when she'd advised hospitalization. He'd trusted her for years as his physician and as his friend. How come he'd lost his faith in her all of a sudden? He should've known that every decision she made would be in his best interest. Why had he ceased to believe that?

Mulder shakes his head to bring him back to the present. This weekend is not about what had gone wrong in the past, it's about finding a starting point together, a common ground to emerge from into a togetherness they shared for too brief a time 15 years ago, when they were allowed to enjoy being mother, father and child for only a couple of weeks.

"Well done, Scully," Mulder praises her, "You made it easy for him, and I bet it wasn't easy for you."

She's hidden her most painful emotions from William, has told him just enough for him to understand her motives and that he was given up for his own good. She's made him understand how difficult the whole process was for her, but the real scope of her despair she's kept to herself.

"I had this conversation a million times in my head and I always asked myself how I'd explain if I ever had the chance."

"Was it like you imagined?"

"I don't know, actually," Scully says. "So many different scenarios seemed possible to me. In most of them, he yelled at me, blamed me, ignored me." She swallows again. Her voice is thick when she opens her mouth again. "Hated me."

Mulder gasps. Why on earth does she still believe any of her actions made her susceptible to blame or hatred?

"He hung on every word you said, Scully. I saw sadness in his eyes, horror, also sympathy for you, but no blame whatsoever. And definitely no hatred. There's no reason for you to feel guilty."

Scully doesn't reply to Mulder's attempts to put her at ease, and he doubts he even gets through to her. He knows the only person who needs to forgive Scully is Scully herself, but he also knows that this is not very likely to ever happen. Part of her will always contemplate if giving up her son really had been the right decision.

Just when Mulder wants to get up to put his arms around Scully's shoulders, the door to the porch opens and Helen pops her head out.

"Dana? Fox? Dinner is ready. Are you coming inside?"

Mulder turns his head. "We'll be right there, Helen. Give us a minute, okay?"

Helen nods. She knows what the conversation between William and his birth parents was about and willingly gives them the time they need to recollect themselves.

Five minutes later, Mulder and Scully appear at the dinner table. Helen volunteered to cook and has come up with a traditional roast with mashed potatoes and vegetables, swimming in dark, thick gravy. Good, homemade comfort food. Moreover, one of William's favorite dishes.

"Mmm, Helen, this sure looks delicious," Mulder says while pulling out one of the remaining chairs. "Sit with me, Scully." He motions her to place herself next to him.

Being used to eaters who are hungry from a day of manual labor on a farm, Helen shoves huge amounts of food on Mulder's and Scully's plates.

"Whoa, do you plan on fattening us up, Helen?"

"I bet you city people live on a low-calorie, cholesterol, and fat-free diet and forgot what real food tastes like. This is soul food, Fox, it'll do you good!"

"Mom's the best cook!" William exclaims and puts a fork laden with food into his mouth. "She cooks like a starred chef," he proudly adds.

"Bill!" Walter flashes his son a warning look, "don't speak with your mouth full! Chew and swallow first!"

"Sorry, Dad," the boy mumbles and casts his eyes down.

Mulder smiles at him and is once again impressed by the atmosphere prevailing in the Van De Kamp family. The way Walter and Helen raise their son is characterized by love and dedication, yet also by firmness and discipline. Mulder asks himself whether he would've been able to fulfill his fatherly duties just as consistently as Walter. If he thinks about what it would've been like to raise a boy, things like playing ball, going to the movies and eating junk food come to his mind, not dealing with unwanted behavior or setting boundaries. During the short time he spent with baby William, he wasn't even able to cope with him crying when Scully put him down to sleep. 'Let him be,' she told him, 'he'll fall asleep eventually.' But he always felt the urge to take him out of his crib and rock him into sleep. 'You're spoiling him, Mulder,' she used to say then. 'Sing him a lullaby and put him down. He'll never learn to fall asleep himself if you carry him around every night until he drops off.' How can she be so cold-hearted, he thought at the time. Now he knows that she wasn't cold-hearted at all but raising and educating their son.

By the time Mulder has ended this train of thought, William has swallowed his food and starts talking again. "Dana and Fox can enter any crime scene just by flashing their FBI badges, Dad! Did you know that?"

"I didn't, Son, but as federal agents, I assumed they would be entitled to do so." Walter smiles at William's open admiration of his birth parents' profession. Having an FBI agent as a parent is much more exciting than calling a farmer your father, of course, a fact he establishes without any hard feelings or jealousy. He has seen his adopted son being eager to find out about his birth parents for a long time, now that he actually found them, Walter is happy that William is pleased with what they turned out to be.

"It doesn't mean that the local police are always happy to welcome us at their crime scenes," Mulder says, arching an eyebrow. "Right, Scully?"

Mulder throws his FBI partner a glance to see whether she's enjoying the family atmosphere at the dinner table just as much as he is but finds her listlessly poking at her food. His heart convulses at the sight. Her face is white as a sheet, her eyes are dark and the lines on her forehead deep. She looks up after her name has been spoken and stares at him like a deer caught in the headlights.

"What?" she breathes.

"Don't you like it, Honey?" Helen asks a little preoccupied that her choice of food isn't to Scully's taste.

Not only Mulder realizes that Scully's mind has been anywhere but in this room. Four pairs of worried eyes look at her. William ceases to chew, Walter lowers his glass, and Helen furrows her brows. Mulder puts his hand softly on hers when she shows no reaction to Helen's question. "Scully?"

"I, uhm...I'm not really hungry, actually." She puts the cutlery down and shoots a quick glance at everyone around the table. "I don't feel so good, I think I should lie down. Excuse me, please." She dabs her mouth with the paper napkin Helen put beside the plate, forces a weak smile and rises from her chair.

"Do you want me to come with you?" Mulder asks, still holding on to her hand.

"No, enjoy your dinner," she replies, pulling her hand from him. "Don't worry about me, I'm fine. Good night. See you all in the morning."

Without any further ado, she turns around and leaves the dining room. The four remaining people look at each other, three of them with bewilderment on their faces, only one knowing exactly what's going on.

"Poor girl," Helen sighs sympathetically, and Walter asks, "What was that?" William just resumed chewing silently, clearly overwhelmed by the situation.

"She's still upset because of what we talked about," Mulder explains. "It wasn't easy for her to go back to the time of William's adoption."

"I'm sorry," the boy whispers. "I didn't mean to upset her."

"I know, Will. Don't you worry, she'll be alright tomorrow. Scully is strong. She wanted to tell you everything, and I'm sure that it was a healing experience for her. All she needs now is a little bit of time to recompose herself." Mulder takes a sip of his wine, then he wipes his mouth, too. "I think I'd better have a look at her, though, because when Scully says she's fine she usually isn't."

"I'll put the leftovers in the fridge in case you're in need of a snack later," Helen tells him.

"Thank you, Helen. Sorry for being so rude tonight."

"Nonsense! You're not being rude at all. Go, Fox! Go, go, go!" She motions for him to follow Scully upstairs to where the bedrooms are.

Mulder smiles at her thankfully. He pats William on the shoulder. "Good night, Buddy. How about we shoot some hoops tomorrow?"

"Yes, definitely!" William's face lights up.

"A little challenge from the three-point line?"

"If you don't expect me to let you win," William replies with a self-assured grin on his face.

If Mulder hadn't been so preoccupied about Scully, he would've enjoyed a little father-son-banter and might have taken it a little further, but for now, all he wants to do is look how she's doing. "Great, we're on then! Have a good night, everybody," he says instead.

Mulder takes the stairs to the upper floor two at a time. Standing in front of the door to their bedroom, he isn't so sure anymore whether Scully really appreciates his concern or whether she prefers some privacy now. She's kept the day she gave William up from him for so long, he's not convinced she now wants to share any more with him than she already has. But she looked so devastated at the dinner table that he can't just leave her alone now. He knocks softly, then cautiously opens the door a tiny crack.

He finds her rolled up on the bed in a fetal position, her back turned to him. No movements are visible, no sounds audible.

"You okay, Scully? Can I come in?"

As she's not reacting to his question in any way, he takes it as an invitation. He quietly shuts the door and tiptoes around the bed to see whether she's sleeping. Her eyes are open, albeit lifeless and dull. Their usually bright blue color has turned into a pale gray. At least, she's not crying, he tells himself. Her shoulders are trembling, though. Mulder takes a blanket from a nearby chair and spreads it over Scully's body. She doesn't seem to notice any of this, not even his presence in the room. He positions himself on the bed facing her, aligning his lanky body to her small frame and absolutely convinced now that it was the right decision to look after her. Scrutinizing her features and gently stroking her cheek, he says, "Rough day, huh?"

His touch eventually seems to get through to her. Her eyes flutter and she looks at him. "I'm so exhausted, Mulder. I feel like a hollow shell. As if all my insides have been sucked out."

"Letting all these memories resurface took its toll on you, Scully. It's alright to be tired," Mulder assures her. If he could only ease her mind, take some of the pain off of her. "Is there anything else you want to get off your chest? Something you didn't want to share with William but may want to share with me?" he dares to ask her.

Scully closes her eyes and inhales deeply. When she opens them again, they're full of tears. In a hoarse voice, she whispers, "He cried, Mulder. When I left him with Monica, he cried for me to come back."

Mulder's taken aback at how Scully's eyes are flooded with tears and she's still working hard to keep them from falling. He wants to cry out to her to let go, to fully open up to him, to let him be her rock. Why for God's sake is it so difficult for her to be weak in his arms? He's been to so many horrible places with her, has seen her distraught so many times, why can't she just let herself fall and trust him to catch her? He already knew that she'd been tormented by William's cries in her dreams anyway. He'd heard her apologize to her son countless times in her sleep, begging for his forgiveness. During such nights, he'd wake her to deliver her from the struggle, to pull her close until her mind freed itself from the horror she'd lived through in her nightmare. Never had he asked her about the dream, though. He'd hoped she'd tell him whenever she was ready. She never was.

"My baby cried and I just walked away. The more he cried, the faster I walked. What kind of a mother was I?" Mulder's insides get all tangled up in a solid knot because of her using the past tense.

The tears are gone from her eyes, and her state of mind has changed from sadness to self-doubt, to regret, and even rancor at herself. He hates to see her shoulder all the burden, always claiming that she'd been the one who made the decision to give him up. They'd argued about it often, but she would never allow him to take part of the responsibility for what happened to William. But she doesn't need to anyway, he hates himself enough already for having left her alone to save his pitiful ass.

"The best mother he could possibly have, Scully! And you have been his mother all those years. Don't say you _were_ his mother, you still are."

Mulder turns to lie on his back and holds his arm out to invite her into an embrace. He's relieved when she moves over to him, pillowing her head on his chest and entwining her leg with his.

"You're the most unselfish mother I know, willing to sacrifice everything for your child. You didn't just walk away, stop talking yourself into believing this crap. I know you had to muster up all your courage and willpower to do what you did." He strokes her back through the blanket she's wrapped around herself like armor. "You have to forgive yourself, Scully. No one else is blaming you but yourself."

As if she didn't listen to what he said, or maybe simply ignoring it, she continues, "I betrayed God's miracle. I prayed for a child and was given a beautiful son. Then I disdained the wonderful gift I had received by giving him away. I should've relied on my faith, should've believed that when God granted me a son, he'd also grant me the strength to raise him. Instead, I faltered and failed."

"Bullshit, Scully!"

Over the years, there's been more than one occasion that the power of her faith had impressed Mulder, the crisis of when they had believed her to be in the final stage of her cancer in particular. The sight of her sitting in a hospital bed saying her last prayer together with Father McCue had been branded into his memory forever. Her faith has often been a source of consolation for Scully, and he was glad she had something to hold on to in her times of distress, but he wouldn't allow it to burden her with a kind of guilt she doesn't deserve.

"The enemies we faced were too powerful. At least, as far as William's well-being was concerned. We fought them over and over again putting our own lives on the line, but of course, you couldn't let that happen to him. You-had-no-other-choice!" he supplies, emphasizing every single word by inserting a brief pause between them. "When will you finally stop deliberately neglecting that fact, Scully?"

He hates to see her being so hard on herself. She's the most caring and sensitive person he's ever met, pouring her tenderness and affection out on everybody she deems worth it, but when it comes to herself, she's as strict and unrelenting as a boot camp instructor. He blames it on the Navy brat she was raised up as and the many years she spent in a male-dominated environment. The cliché that women are the weaker sex never applied to Scully. He loves that part of her, this steel core that has helped her survive when so many others, male and female, would have given in. But he also loves her seldom seen feminine side, when she allows herself to need his strong chest for comfort.

"Give yourself some credit, will you?" he tries again. "You did what you had to do, and you paid the highest price a mother can pay."

To his relief, she seems to relax a bit. Her shoulders aren't trembling anymore. She pulls the blanket up to her chin and releases a sigh. When she lifts her head off his chest to look at him, he sees that the tears in her eyes have finally dried up completely.

"This is not only about me. What about you, Mulder? What demons are you fighting?"

Mulder gets the message. She's done talking about herself, and he knows her too well to try to push her any further. But he also knows it's more than just a diversionary maneuver to get a chance to put up the walls around her heart again. This weekend with all its talking has the potential to heal some of his own wounds as well. Now he's compelled to open up too, to voice some issues he hasn't yet talked to her about.

"You mean other than having been a regular first-class jackass for most of the time?"

He receives a puzzled look as if she doesn't know what he's referring to.

"Don't look at me like that! Wouldn't you say I behaved like one after having come back from the dead? I can't forget your face when I woke up in the hospital. It was so full of sadness and fear that I almost thought I was having a near-death experience and you were looking at me passing away rather than me coming back from a comatose state. And what did I do, huh? I made a completely inappropriate joke. Ugh!" He's still disgusted by himself when he thinks back to that moment.

"You'd just woken up, Mulder. You didn't know any of the circumstances of your recovery."

She puts her head back on his chest and Mulder resumes stroking her back. "Oh no, please, don't defend me! I don't deserve it. I can't believe I let you carry my bag when you brought me home after I was discharged. You were seven months pregnant, for heaven's sake, and I let you carry my bag!" His voice is sharp as a knife.

"I insisted on doing that, remember? It wasn't very heavy and you were still weak," Scully reminds him.

Mulder stops stroking her back. "Nuh uh, stop defending me! I was so unappreciative it makes me sick to this very day. You cleaned my apartment, you cared for my fish tank, you paid my rent." He stares at the crown of her head on his chest. "You never gave up on me, Scully. You fought for me even though the odds were bad. And what did I do when you eventually wanted to lean on me? What? I pushed you away, kept you at arm's length." He let our a bitter chuckle. "Well done, Mulder! You can be proud of yourself, you pitiful whiner!"

"My pregnancy had come to you as a complete surprise just like it had to me," Scully tries to build a bridge for him.

"It did, but I bet you dealt with it a lot more maturely than I. I pulled a blanket over my head just like a child and told everybody - including you - to leave me alone instead of dealing with it. As if all my problems would go away if only I ignored them long enough."

"Why was my pregnancy such a problem for you, Mulder? I often pictured the way I'd eventually tell you and I wondered how you'd react at learning that you'd be a father. I would've never thought you'd react the way you did."

"It hurt you."

"Of course it hurt me. I had buried you, Mulder, had accepted the fact that I was going to raise this child without you, and then a second miracle was happening right in front of my very eyes and I got you back. Can you imagine what that was like?"

"In a way, yes, as you had come back to me once after I had already thought you were lost, but I was too occupied coping with what had happened to me to be able to put myself in your shoes even for a second. What a self-centered dick I was!"

As Scully doesn't reply, not even telling him to stop berating himself, Mulder knows he isn't so far from the truth. Although she'd been very understanding and patient with him at the time, he knows she also cursed him once in a while for keeping a distance between them. He dismissed his chance to explain himself then, it's about time he started doing so now. "The world I came back to was so different from the one I used to know." He shrugs. "I felt so out-of-place, I didn't know where I fit in."

"You weren't convinced the baby was yours," Scully notes dryly.

"Not in the sense that I thought you..." He trails off, but Scully knows what he was about to say and doesn't spare him the monstrosity of his train of thought.

"Not in the sense that you thought that I had been hopping into someone else's bed right after your abduction, did you? Thank you, what a credit of trust!"

"Scully,..." Mulder groans, "that's not what I meant."

She sighs. She's pushed herself off his chest by now, sitting on her heels next to him. Mulder shivers at of the loss of physical contact.

"My whole pregnancy was overshadowed, Mulder. First by your abduction and the search for you. Then by your death and the painful reality that our child would have to grow up without a father. When I got you back, I was hoping to finally be able to enjoy it, to share it with you, but instead I had to accept the chasm you so eagerly kept between us. You'd moved further away from me than ever before. I didn't feel any connection between you and me."

"I remember my bewilderment about how long your hair was when I first opened my eyes. It had been much shorter in my memory, and I asked myself how long I had been sleeping. Then I saw your belly. Dammit, Scully, I had to look twice just to be sure you simply hadn't put on some weight."

He hears her letting out a bitter chuckle. "Some weight? I was huge, Mulder! A walrus!"

"You were beautiful, only that I couldn't delight in your state when I finally realized what it was. I told myself I was hallucinating. At the time I had left you, you had been a slim, barren woman, and when I returned you suddenly were a heavy, pregnant woman. And I didn't have any explanation for it."

"No?" Scully arches an eyebrow.

Mulder rolls his eyes. "I knew how babies were made, and I remembered we did what was necessary to make one, but it was not supposed to happen this way. Especially not after we had failed with IVF."

His voice is thick with emotion, as always when his thoughts travel back to the turn their partnership was taking at the time. Neither of them would've called the other their lover, and if asked whether they were dating, they both would've shaken their heads vehemently. Their partnership wasn't strictly platonic anymore, but it hadn't turned into a romantic love affair either. There were still many nights they slept apart, each at their place. They were sleeping alone more often than together, actually. When working on a case, Scully always insisted they had separate rooms, and they never kissed at the office, not even gazed at each other. Okay, Mulder might have gazed a few times and he definitely made moves to kiss her in what he believed to be their basement lair rather than an office, but she made sure they never crossed the line while on duty.

Although that 'line' was so hard to identify. Where exactly was it, that line between their professional and their private lives? The two universes hadn't been clearly separated. How could they have been? They spent more time together than most working duos, had gone through numerous personal crises together, trusted each other blindly, and relied completely on each other. Sometimes Mulder had the feeling they weren't acting as two different individuals but rather as one organism, at least while working on a case; and they were almost always working on a case.

"Let's be honest here, Scully. Did you think of procreation when we...uh...on our first night...or on one of the not so many nights thereafter?" His insecurity regarding how to put the words forces Mulder to stop talking. It suddenly dawns him that they've never really talked about that transition period of their relationship, but he's willing to grab the bull by the horns now, to finally voice his thoughts. "I mean, it wasn't like we were having one of those conventional relationships. Sleeping with each other had most certainly brought some new dynamics to it, but what were we exactly? Can you name it?"

Scully looks at him with questioning eyes. "We were partners. Friends."

"Yeah, sure we were partners and we were friends, but we were also more than that, right? I usually don't sleep with my friends. So what were we, Scully? What? A couple? Lovers? Partners having sex?"

All those names others gave to their relationships didn't seem to fit in their case: entanglement, flirtation, romance, love affair, fling... No, it definitely wasn't a fling, Mulder's mind supplies. It was serious from the start and determined to be long-term, permanent even, although marriage some day also seemed so unlikely for them.

"You once called me your touchstone," Scully reminds him softly. "Do you remember? I had just told you about your former lover being found dead."

"How could I forget that moment? I almost kissed you. I wanted to kiss you so badly. Diana's and my story had long been over, you had become the one person in my life that I couldn't imagine being without."

He'd orbited her for years like a satellite the earth, until her gravitational force had eventually pulled him completely into her sphere. Was becoming physically intimate simply an inevitable consequence? Just another way to get yet a little closer than they already were? An organic metamorphosis from friendship to romance, so to say?

"The one _person_ , but not the one woman." Scully establishes with a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that I asked myself for a long time whether you saw me as a woman with feelings and desires or rather as your asexual partner you can kiss on New Year's Eve or climb into bed and cuddle up with once in a while."

"Come on, Scully, give me a break! What did I miss here? You made it perfectly clear that you weren't in to that usual fluffy stuff at all. You know, like bouquets of red roses, romantic dinners, love letters. Actually, you threw me off unceremoniously more than once by saying 'See you on Monday, Mulder, ' not even considering that I might have planned to spend the weekend with you."

It had been a difficult phase for them taking a step forward and then again two backwards, trying to make the other decipher a secret language. Unsuccessfully most of the time. For two people so dedicated to the truth, they had avoided getting to the bottom of their true mutual feelings like the plague.

"I know," Scully admits contritely. "Nothing ever was easy with us, Mulder." She sighs again.

"No, it wasn't."

"I didn't even know whether you reciprocated my feelings."

Now it's him who sighs. How incredibly stupid he had been to leave her guessing. They didn't have sex regularly like a usual romantic couple, they never made out just for the fun of it, and yet Mulder would claim they were in love with each other. It had taken him seven years until he allowed himself to stand by his feelings for Scully, and when he'd finally come to terms with loving her, he didn't have the guts to act on it. Suffice it to say that he'd never been truly in love before, at least not with someone who truly loved him back. What he had had were entanglements, affairs, flings, maybe romance,...but never deep, true, and unconditional love.

"I did, Scully. I don't know why we never spoke about our feelings. But honestly, to me, it never really seemed necessary. You showed me how you felt every day out in the field. Your actions spoke louder than words, and I thought so did mine."

He tries to find her eyes, but she keeps looking away. He stares at her intensely until she turns her head to meet his gaze. What he sees in her face is blankness and lack of understanding.

"When you came back, it seemed to me you had forgotten completely about us. Or at least, didn't want to think back to it." There's a bitterness in Scully's voice that leaves no doubt about how much she'd been hurt by the cool distance he had kept.

"I had not," he insists, "I hadn't forgotten anything."

He takes one of her hands, lifts it up to his mouth and places a gentle kiss on the back of it. She pulls it back somewhat annoyed.

"Then why couldn't you believe in the miracle you'd once told me to hope for?"

"I don't know. Maybe it was too huge an issue. I mean, we'd never talked about raising a kid together or being a family."

It still amazes him that even when she was trying to get pregnant, they had never talked about their expectations. Mulder isn't sure he even had any. When Scully asked him the awkward question whether he'd be her sperm donor, what made him agree was his ability to finally give her something after all that had been taken from her. He was the reason for her infertility, and all of a sudden he could help her become a mother. Hell, how could he have turned her down and still be able to look at himself in the mirror? The question of whether she'd preferred to be a single mother or wanted them to be a family never really occurred to him. He would've been perfectly fine with being known as Uncle Mulder as long as Scully was a happy mom.

"We didn't feel the need to discuss family matters because the chance was so slim it would happen with IVF and practically non-existent the...uhm...other way. But then it did happen, Mulder! I don't know why, and I don't know how, I only know it did."

"Contemplating fatherhood overwhelmed me, Scully. I had so much to do with finding out where my place in the world was," Mulder says.

"Your place was exactly where it had been before. Why would it have changed?"

"It wasn't that easy for me. I came back into the lives of people who had already said their goodbyes to me, who had moved on. Not only you, but also the Gunmen, Skinner, my neighbors, the guy at the supermarket,... even the bureaucrats had already made a good job at it. My social security number had been frozen, my driver's license and passport canceled, if you hadn't intervened my landlord would have had a Salvation Army truck picking up my stuff before the ink on my death certificate dried. How was I to know where to fit in? I had literally ceased to exist!"

"You don't have to tell me, Mulder. I stood at your grave. And the bureaucratic mail was sent to me as the executrix of your will. I was reminded every day by an impersonal letter or uncaring phone call that you were dead, while in the meantime a part of you was growing inside of me. Dividing cells in my womb, rotting cells in that coffin. The irony of it, the injustice,...it hurt like hell."

"God, Scully,..." Mulder croaks. He lets out a bitter chuckle. "Rotting cells. Nice image."

He pinches the bridge of his nose and takes a moment to think about what he's going to say next, how to put the words together to make her understand his helpless, overwhelmed, and angst-inducing frame of mind at the time.

"Your world had continued turning. Night had followed day, one season had superseded the other, after every new moon there had been a full moon. But my world had come to a complete stop. For six months, nothing had happened in my life. Nothing good, that is. Cells had been rotting, but that had been about it."

He knows this last remark will earn him an angry look from Scully. And he is right. He's thrown a silent stare so cold it sends a shiver down his spine. Why on earth did he have to turn her gut-wrenching image into a cynical joke? He's such an idiot.

"Look, Scully, I'd not only missed half a year of my life, but also half a year of yours. A lot happens to people in half a year. You were the best example. I inwardly questioned what else I had missed besides you becoming pregnant."

"What happened to me happened before you were taken. I was already pregnant when you left," she reminds him.

Only that he hadn't had a single clue. Sure, afterwards it was easy to connect all the dots. Her fatigue, the nausea and lack of appetite, her passing out in the middle of a forest. They had all been early symptoms, and for every other woman Mulder would've considered the possibility of a pregnancy, especially after having had unprotected sex with said woman. But not in Scully's case.

"Scully, when we were in Oregon, the idea of you being pregnant didn't even cross my mind. Did it cross yours?"

Scully closes her eyes and only shakes her head.

"I was so worried about you. I hoped you were simply overworked and just needed some time to recharge your batteries and pushed the lurking fear that the cancer might've returned as far to the back of my head as possible. If I had had the slightest idea you were carrying my child, do you really believe I would've gone back to Oregon?"

"Maybe not."

"Maybe?" He laughs bitterly. "Sure as hell I wouldn't have! I would've stayed home to be able to stroke your back when the morning sickness made you vomit. I would've stayed home to fulfill the weirdest food cravings at any uncivilized hour or to massage your swollen feet when needed. I would've wanted to share this with you. Had I only known."

When he did eventually have the chance to do all those things for her, oddly enough he felt like he couldn't be of any use to her.

"It seemed like you didn't need me at all, Scully. I felt like an innocent bystander looking at how you were going on with your life. You'd mastered everything so nicely without me. Your pregnancy, your daily routine, even your work with the FBI. Got yourself a new partner."

Scully jolts out of the bed so vigorously that Mulder bounced up and down on the mattress.

"You don't really mean what you're saying, Mulder, do you?" she whispers breathlessly. "I didn't _get_ myself a new partner. Doggett was assigned to me, whether I wanted it or not. And what else was I supposed to do than try to go on somehow? I was responsible for another human being, not only for myself anymore. If it had just been me, I would've preferred to lie next to you in that coffin." She inhales deeply to steady her voice which threatens to crack. "I had put my baby's and my own well-being at risk during the search for you, had left my partner in the dark about it, had broken FBI rules just to be able to go on searching for you. And you have the nerve to tell me I mastered everything nicely? It wasn't _nice_ , Mulder! It wasn't nice at all!"

That's why he hadn't told her. He knew he'd never find the right words to describe his bitter thoughts and emotions. Has he really just said she mastered everything nicely? He had seen it on her face when he woke up at the hospital how much she had suffered, how much she had feared and mourned for him. What for God's sake has made him say she'd mastered everything nicely? He grinds his teeth so hard that the sounds emerging from his jaw make Scully look at him.

"Mulder," she begs him, "please tell me you weren't thinking that I just moved on without you."

Mulder flashes her an apologizing glance. "No," he answers her in a toneless voice, "of course, not. I'm sorry, I didn't put the words right. I meant I felt superfluous. Like the third wheel. You were having a baby, had a partner who wasn't obsessed with the X-Files...you had everything you needed. Everything you'd always wished for."

As the last words have left his mouth, Mulder frowns, then closes his eyes and bites his tongue. Shit, that didn't sound right either. To his luck, Scully's anger has already dissolved. She's not taking his words literally, but rectifies the last things he said.

"Those were the things I had always wished for, right, but they weren't all I needed."

Mulder lets this pass without comment out of fear of again saying something stupid. He wasn't able to accept her miracle as his also, no matter how hard he tried. He was so detached, not feeling any connection to the unexpected interloper occupying her prominent belly doing somersaults. How can he tell her without hurting her feelings? Simply thinking the word 'interloper' is already giving him a bad conscience because it's a symptom of his pathetic fear that the baby had superseded him in Scully's affection. Later he learned that Scully had enough love inside her heart for more than just one person.

"I needed you, Mulder," she continues, "you gave meaning to those things. You, and only you." Mulder nods. Why he didn't allow himself to believe it at the time, he can't say.

Scully has become fidgety by now. She's pacing back and forth between the bed and the door while she speaks. "I'm not saying I wasn't functioning or looking forward to motherhood, but I missed you every second of every day, Mulder. I wanted and I needed you, as my partner, as my baby's father, and as my...my perfect other. Living without you was as if a part of my body had been amputated and at the same time I felt this miraculous new life growing inside my womb. There were so many conflicting emotions tugging at me, I sometimes didn't know how to make it through one more day without you. It was hard enough to cope with it while I believed you had died, but it was even harder when you were standing right in front of me but yet so out of reach. I had you back but still was so alone."

Mulder closes his eyes. Deep down he had seen all this, her sadness, her loneliness, her disappointment in him. Her eyes had been like an open book despite her efforts to conceal her inner turmoil in order to give him the time he needed to heal. The selfless care she granted him at a moment she needed to be cared for still humbles him to this very day.

"I know it sounds stupid, Scully, and I'm sorry to be saying it, but I felt so useless," he tries to explain more to himself than to her. "I felt like a sperm donor in the making of this baby, only that this time the procedure hadn't taken place in a culture dish. In my imagination, I didn't have anything to do with this pregnancy except for having knocked you up."

Scully doesn't have to voice how much hearing him use these words about her hurts her. Her face, her voice, her entire demeanor tells him, and he's sorry to be doing this to her, to be causing her pain over and over and over again. But he can't help it, he has to tell her now. If he doesn't today, he might never do it. Today seems to be the day for the both of them to pour their hearts out and share their last secrets.

"When I appealed to my brain, it told me that I was involved, but my soul couldn't do other than feel like an onlooker. I simply couldn't relate emotionally to the cluster of cells in your belly. It's not like I didn't want you to become a mother. You know how hard it was for me to cope with the fact that you were barren just because some people wanted to teach me a lesson. I just lacked the understanding that I had been a part of it. Plus, I didn't know whether you wanted me to be a part of it."

Scully stares at him, her brown furrowed. "You didn't know whether I wanted you to be a part of it?" she repeats, obviously unable to believe what she's just heard. Mulder shrugs.

"Well, I still thought you'd be better off without me. All I had done was cause you pain and suffering. The list of what and who you'd lost since you started hanging out with me was miles long."

"How often have we had this conversation, Mulder?" Her tone is stern and reproachful. "How often have I told you that I made my choices and that I didn't regret a single day that you were one of them? That I decided to be with you and accepted all the consequences?"

"Dozens of times."

"There you go."

There's more to it, though. "I also thought the sprout would be better off without me. I didn't believe I could be a good father with the role models of fatherhood I had in my life."

"I knew you'd be a wonderful father. Why did you think I asked you to be my sperm donor?"

"I thought you were only after my excellent genes," he quips, but his attempt to joke the matter away fails, Scully's features remain earnest. She's standing several feet away from him now, as if to show him how far apart they'd been at the time. He avoids looking at her but he can feel her eyes boring into him.

"I could've chosen the genes of an acclaimed scientist, a star pianist or a top-ranking athlete from a catalog."

"Oh, really? A top-ranking athlete? Hmmm, to compensate for the lack of affinity for sports in your genes, I suppose." Another pathetic tease from Mulder prompts Scully to retort in the manner she knows best.

"A variety of factors come into play when a female decides which male she will allow to inseminate her. It's the law of procreation."

Now Mulder's really stunned and what he says next is not meant as a joke. "So how come you asked me when you could have had a star pianist?"

"You do have the lanky, elegant fingers of a pianist, Mulder."

"Oh?"

"And you can hit a baseball beautifully."

"Thank you," Mulder finds a moment of joy and pride and waggles his eyebrows in remembrance before saying, "but do I have to remind you that I'm an arts scholar? I can't say I won many accolades as a scientist."

"That was what I'd throw into the gene pool," Scully quips with a smirk, hoping to smooth things over. "I was hoping for a perfect mate, just like any other female. That's it."

"And you thought I was the one?" She can't be serious, can she? A beautiful, likable, warm, intelligent brainiac like she really thought that a damaged, socially incompatible, albeit admittedly bright but still unusual weirdo was her perfect mate?

"It was you or no one, " she whispers so silently, Mulder hardly hears it. He holds his breath, momentarily paralyzed by her openness, then he pats on the spot next to him.

"C'mere!"

Scully slowly walks over to the bed from the corner she's positioned herself in for the last part of the conversation and places herself next to Mulder, who's sitting with his back to the headboard. She tucks her feet under her legs and kneads her fingers so vehemently in her lap that he finally takes in her hands in his out of fear she might break a finger. He starts drawing gentle circles on their backs in an effort to soothe her.

"I'm so lucky. I've always been more dependent on you than you were on me. Up to this very day. I simply knew you'd manage to raise this kid perfectly without me and so I thought it would be better if I didn't butt back into something I was already taken out of."

"You're a jerk, Mulder! You know that?"

"As I said, I was a real dick." Mulder is grateful for the short laugh he was able to elicit from her, then he continues. "I awakened from my state of self-pity and self-centeredness when you broke down in your apartment in front of the pizza man. When I checked you into the hospital and the nurse thought I was your husband and consequently the father-to-be, something clicked. It took me completely off-guard when I realized I not only feared for your life, which I already had a lot of experience in, but also for the baby's life. And not only because I knew you'd be devastated if you lost it, but because I'd be devastated myself. That was the moment I understood I was related, very closely related. I hadn't known I wanted to have a baby with you, until I was afraid this might go wrong and we'd never get a second chance."

Scully inhaled deeply. "You put your hand on my belly."

"Yes." Mulder smiles dreamily. "And I felt him kick me. As if he wanted to knock some sense into me. Like," he imitates a child's voice. "'Hey, you moron! You knocked up my mom, now get your act together and be there for her!' Of course, I didn't know he was a he at the time." He flashes her a short, sheepish grin. "It was awesome, Scully! The movement inside your womb, the realization that there was indeed a human being growing inside of you, and the knowledge that this human being actually was a part of me... It took my breath away."

Scully's eyes start filling with tears. "Our time together as a family was so short," she says with a heavy sigh.

"It was. Much too short. But it was the happiest time of my life. And I don't want to do without it. There I was, a man who'd never thought he could be a family man, and suddenly I had become one, and I couldn't picture my life without my son and his mother anymore. I missed you two so much when I was away. I asked myself what the use of protecting my miserable existence was if it meant separation from the two people I loved and cared about the most. What kept me holding on was the prospect of reuniting with you and William one day, of resuming what we had those few weeks after he was born."

That, of course, is the moment Scully's self-loathing kicks in. "Oh, Mulder," she whispers. "I'm so sorry for what you had to face when Skinner and I finally found you it that dark, cold cell. It ripped my heart apart when I saw the grief on your face after I told what I had done, that we'd lost William."

As much as he wants to spare her the whole truth, it's time he finally tells her about his state of mind at the time. He's procrastinated too long by far. Why he's never told her, he can't say. Cowardice? Numbness? Lack of words? Post-traumatic syndrome? No, scratch that! All of it but one: cowardice. He definitely was a coward. Unable to open up to the woman who'd put herself on the government's wanted list just to be with him. The time had come to give her the explanation he'd buried so deep inside himself for so many years, he'd almost forgotten all about it himself.

"When I realized I lost him, Scully, when I realized I was never going to see my son again, it felt like I failed him just like I had failed my sister. Once again, I allowed a family member to be taken away from me."

Scully gasps. With her hand on her mouth she says, "good grief, Mulder, it never occurred to me that for you it must've seemed like a recurring pattern in your life. First Samantha, then your father and mother, and finally William. I'm so sorry."

"Not to mention you. They tried to split us up more than once. They knew that taking all my loved ones away from me would break me eventually. I was fortunate enough to get you back each time I thought I'd already lost you. If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be here today."

"Why have you never said anything?"

"No offense, but this coming from you sounds a bit odd, Scully."

Scully shakes her head, huffing angrily. "We screwed it up, Mulder. Both of us. We should've talked more, should've shared what was on our minds, instead of dealing with it separately. We were not only not healing ourselves, but also preventing the other from healing. We might've prevented estranging ourselves from each other. We might've prevented our separation," she sobs.

"We were heartbroken, Scully. Scarred. Traumatized. Unable to cope with the loss and unable to really talk to each other. Parents aren't supposed to lose a child. It's not envisioned by nature."

"And still, we screwed it up. We could've talked away some of the pain. It could've spared us so much."

"Maybe, but wouldn't you say we're pretty fine right now?" Mulder squeezes Scully's hands to make her look at him. "We're back together, and William is here with us. He's having a good life, a life you allowed him to have. Our sacrifice wasn't for naught, Scully. It was worth every bit of pain and sorrow it caused us, because he is safe, he is happy and cared for. And now we're being rewarded. Our son is downstairs eating dinner, looking forward to spending time with us tomorrow. He doesn't loathe us for having given him up. He calls us Mom and Dad! Can you believe it? He cares about us. You should've seen his face when you left the dinner table. It was so full of concern and sympathy for you. We can't catch up on the time without him, and we will never be a traditional family, but we're finally more than just some names on his birth certificate in a folder locked away at the adoption agency."

Scully's eyes are wet with tears but there's also a smile developing at the corners of her mouth. "Thank you, Mulder."

"Thank you for what?"

"Everything."

"Well, that's not exactly the accuracy I'm used to coming from you, Miss Science!"

Scully chuckles but becomes earnest again immediately. "Thank you for forgiving me for when I gave up on us. Thank you...for taking me back." Saying those last words, she looks at their entwined hands and a tear falls down on them.

"Are you nuts, Scully? Thank you for taking you back?" He must've misheard something here! She's thanking him for taking her back? "Only a complete idiot wouldn't take you back. I might be a moron once in a while, but I'm not that stupid!"

"Thank you for this weekend," Scully continues, interrupting Mulder.

"I listened to what your mom told me, Scully. Her last words to us were about William. I admit it took me a few days until I figured it all out, why she looked at me when she said them. She was smiling at me, Scully!" Mulder has to swallow the lump down his throat that keeps building up whenever he thinks back to the moment Margaret Scully drew her terminal breath. "She practically ordered me to go and find William for you. I felt like she was sending me out on a quest to find William for you. Like this humble knight," he points at himself, both thumbs touching his chest, "was sent out by his gracious Queen to conquer unknown territory."

Scully's eyebrows take a hike toward her hairline. "A humble knight? You?"

Mulder ignores her remark, hardly hears it in the first place. His mind is elsewhere. "And when we were sitting on that log by the lake and you told me about the questions haunting you, the questions you had about your lost child, my mind was set. I knew I was going to find a way for you to get some answers. Of course, I hadn't imagined us together with him on a weekend getaway. This is so much better than what I had hoped to accomplish."

For a moment, they gaze at each other, words not being necessary any longer and non-verbal communication taking over. Neither has to express what they are to each other, they know. They always have and always will. Then the silence is broken by an unmistakable growl emanating Mulder's stomach.

"You hungry?" Scully asks.

"Well, I didn't finish my dinner."

Scully purses her lips. "Then let's go downstairs. I'll fix you something."

"Helen said she'd put the leftovers in the fridge."

"Even better." Scully disentangles her hands from Mulder's, unfolds her legs and gets off the bed. "C'mon, I'll heat it up for you."

* * *

In the kitchen, Mulder places himself on one of the bar stools at the counter, observing how Scully opens the refrigerator door and pulls out several Tupperware boxes. She fills a plate with a slice of roast, some mashed potatoes, and vegetables, completed with two spoons of gravy. She then pops the plate into the microwave and sets the timer to 180 seconds. "Your midnight snack will be ready in a minute."

Mulder frowns. "I think I saw you setting the timer to three minutes. Another scientific inaccuracy, any reason I should be worried about you, Scully?" he teases her.

"Hardy har har, Mulder. Very funny!"

"I can't help it. I'm a notorious joker, " he says displaying an innocent grin.

Scully only shakes her head and sighs. "Something to drink?"

"A glass of water would be nice."

Scully opens three cabinets before she finds the right one, but the shelf with the glasses is too high for her to reach. "Jesus, who furnished this house? A giant?"

Mulder jumps off his stool and positions himself right behind her, pressing his lean body against her back. "Wait, let me get it for you."

Scully turns around to face him and looks right at the imprint on the chest of his T-shirt. Mulder grabs two glasses but doesn't give them to her. Instead, he keeps them in his outstretched hands way out of her reach and presses her further against the counter. Her eyebrows hit her hairline.

"Now what?" she asks expectantly.

He grins at her, obviously enjoying himself immensely. "I never knew getting glasses out of a kitchen cabinet could be so arousing," he ponders.

"Arousing? I don't know what you're talking about, Mulder. I'm not arous-"

The last syllable is swallowed by Mulder's mouth on hers, and the way she reciprocates his kiss betrays the words she has just spoken. The way her tongue welcomes his leaves misjudgment on his part very unlikely.

"Not aroused, Scully?" Mulder asks, his lips not leaving hers.

"Mmmaybe a little," she breathes into him.

The microwave announces the completion of its task chiming a loud 'bing' and destroying their moment of endearments. Scully heaves an annoyed moan and reluctantly breaks the kiss.

"Ah, dinner's ready," Mulder acclaims matter-of-factly on his part. "I think I should be filling these." He's fidgeting with the glasses in front of her face for a moment, then walks over to the sink and fills them with water from the faucet.

Scully snorts audibly when she takes the plate out of the microwave and places it quite callously on the kitchen counter. Mulder hands her one glass ignoring her attitude and places himself on the bar stool again. He puts the glass to his mouth and looks at her above the brim while he takes some thirsty gulps.

"Don't look at me like the cat that ate the canary," Scully demands but only earns herself a triumphant smile from him.

"Not aroused," he mumbles to himself and chuckles silently. He knows she's frustrated that he had turned her on so fiercely and then off again in a matter of seconds. He also knows his comment is not suited to ease her annoyance. As if on cue, she hisses,

"Oh, shut up, Mulder, and start eating!"

He holds his open palms innocently up to her. "No cutlery."

She pulls hard at the drawer she assumes to be holding the silverware, which is actually stuffed with spatulas, a bread knife, ladles of various sizes, sets of salad tongs, and a few cake servers. She tears open the next one which is home to aluminum foil, plastic wrap, and sandwich paper. Another one she tries holds the cutting boards, and the next is filled with little containers of herbs and spices, all labeled and neatly lined up like tin soldiers.

"Darn, where is it?" she curses.

Mulder has been watching her with amusement. "There's one drawer left you haven't yanked out yet," he points out casually.

"Who places the silverware at the other end of the kitchen as far as possible from the plates? That doesn't make any sense!" Scully rants, her fire fueled by every little one of his comments. Her cheeks have adopted that crimson color which indicates passion but also fury.

"There's no such thing as the science of kitchen furnishings, Scully."

"I didn't say it was science! It's common sense, for heaven's sake!"

As Mulder predicted, Scully finds the utensils she was searching for in the one last drawer that hasn't been looked into yet. Blowing a rebellious strand of hair from her face, she takes out a knife and a fork and hands them to him, scowling like a wild cat. Mulder tries to hold back his grin but can't keep the corners of his mouth from rising. He loves it when her scientific brain hits the wall of the banality of everyday situations. He also loves it when her temper gets the better of her and his composed, self-controlled, always rational partner gets worked up by her emotions.

"Scully,...it's only drawers in a kitchen." He leans over the counter, takes her hand, pulls her around it and into his personal space. "With your phenomenal brain, I bet you'll have it memorized by tomorrow and will be able to function in this kitchen as if to the manner born." He flashes her a loving smile and watches her unwind a little. The glint in her eyes is fading, her cheeks turn to their original color again, and her shoulders aren't as tight anymore. Mulder feels her relax into him. He kisses her hair and strokes his hand up and down her lower arm.

"Eat. Your food is getting cold, Mulder," Scully says, her anger finally having completely dissipated.

"Aren't you gonna have something?" he asks.

"No. I'm not hungry. I'll simply watch you. It smells good, though."

"And it tastes good, too. Helen really is a great cook."

"Oh, she's so much more than that. She's such a nice woman and a wonderful mother to William. Both are wonderful parents. I can't tell you what a relief it is for me to finally know that."

"I think I have some idea," Mulder says with his mouth full, glad that Walter isn't present to shake his head at him, mumbling somewhat dismissively 'like father, like son'.

"Imagine if he had ended up in a family with no love, no care, no warmth. With parents who neglected him, mistreated him, or even abused him." Her voice breaks at the end. "God, I wouldn't have survived it if that had happened, Mulder."

"It didn't happen, there's no use in losing a single thought about it. He's happy where he is."

A comfortable silence manifests itself between them. Mulder enjoys his midnight snack, Scully watches him. Eventually, he puts the last piece of roast in his mouth, wipes his lips, and empties his glass of water.

"What do you say, Scully? Shall we finally call it a night?"

Scully takes the empty plate and puts it in the sink together with the silverware and the glasses. "Do you really think we'll get some sleep?"

"Well, if you let me spoon you, chances are good I'll fall asleep. I need to rest. I have a challenge coming up tomorrow on who can score more baskets from the three-point line, Will or this old man here." He points to himself.

"Do you stand a chance against him?"

"Not if we play one on one. That's why I suggested the three-point shots," Mulder says with a grin.

"I see. Can I root for one of you or do I have to be impartial?"

"Who would you want to root for?"

"Hmmm." She bites her lower lip. "You know, I have that soft spot for the underdogs. The outsiders."

Mulder's eyes widen. "What? You think I'm the underdog?"

Scully laughs and starts scooting up the stairs. Mulder follows instantly, striding after her. When she's at the landing, he leans forward and catches her top at the waist. He's still three steps down from her, which doesn't keep him from being close enough to reach her with his long arms, but three steps altogether give her a height advantage neither of them is used to. When she turns around and looks down on him, they stare at each other for a moment in surprise, then smile.

"So, this is what it's like to be forced to look up to meet people's eyes," Mulder says, "I haven't done that since I was fourteen."

"And I haven't looked down on someone over the age of eleven for a long time," Scully notes with a grin.

Mulder climbs one step and is almost at eye-level with her now, albeit still two steps down from her. Her eyes follow his and he's drawn into them by the hypnotizing intensity of her gaze. He takes the final two steps to stand right next to her, looking down on her now as their height difference is very prominent with both of them stocking-footed. He pulls her chin towards him with his index finger.

"I don't care why you root for me as long as you do."

"I've always rooted for you, Mulder."

"I know, Scully. Forget I asked."

With this, he presses his lips on hers in a slow, sweet kiss.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

 _ **Author's Note:** This chapter in not written from Mulder's POV like the first chapter. As a matter of fact, he's only a supporting actor here. Nevertheless, we're going to find out a lot about him and his truth._

 _My thanks go to my wonderful beta reader VioletStella. I couldn't do this without her..._

* * *

Scully wakes up the next morning beside a sleeping Mulder. She's still in his arms with her head on his chest the way she was when she fell asleep a few hours ago. After listening to his regular heartbeat and the clattering of crockery downstairs for a few minutes, Scully slips out of the bed, cautious not to wake Mulder, takes a quick shower, and dresses in casual clothes before she heads downstairs.

"Good morning," she says when she reaches the kitchen where William is hunched over a plate with pancakes and Helen at the stove providing sustenance.

William looks up upon hearing Scully's voice, a wide smile developing on his face. "Dana!"

Helen turns around and smiles at her. "Good morning, my dear. Are you feeling any better?"

"Yes, I'm feeling fine, Helen. Thanks for asking."

"Is Fox coming down any time soon?" William asks.

"Well, he's still sleeping, which is quite odd because Mulder usually is an early riser."

Helen takes the pan off the stove and walks over to the table where William is sitting. "Here you go, Billy, last serving. We want to save some for Dana and Fox."

Scully inhales deeply to let the sweet flavor of freshly made pancakes run through her nose. "It smells very good."

"Mom's blueberry pancakes are the best! You've got to have some, Dana," William says, obviously getting used to calling her Dana.

The boy bolts his last serving down in no time. He takes his plate to the sink and puts it on the counter. "That was delicious, Mom."

"Into the dishwasher right away, Bill!" Helen tells him with a stern look on her face Scully hasn't seen there before. "How often do I have to tell you that I'm not cleaning up after you?"

"Sorry, Mom," he says while opening and filling the dishwasher. Scully feels bad for having left Mulder's dishes in the sink after his midnight snack when she sees that they have been moved into the dishwasher by a not so mysterious benefactor. She almost waits for Helen to give her a lecture about caring for one's own dirty dishes too.

William places a quick peck on his mother's cheek, then turns to Scully and puts his arms around her waist. He bends down a little and hugs her with his chin on her shoulder. "I'm glad you're feeling okay again."

He releases her, the moment being too short for Scully to realize or even enjoy what happened. Before she can even think about hugging him back, he's already stepped out of her personal space, disintegrating their physical connection, much to Scully's chagrin.

"Tell Fox when he comes down that I'm outside practicing three-point shots."

The shows both his mothers a boyish grin, the next second he's rushed out the door into the backyard.

Scully stares after him. "He hugged me," she says, her tone suggesting she's absolutely thrilled.

"And you're surprised?" Helen asks.

"I have to say, yes, I am."

"He cares about you, Dana. Very much."

"After what I told him yesterday? How I gave him up?"

"Especially after what you told him yesterday." Helen looks at Scully with intense but also warm eyes. "He was very worried about you when you rushed upstairs last night."

"Uh, well, yes, I'm sorry about that, Helen. It wasn't very polite."

"It's alright, I was wondering when you would finally give in. It must've been an extremely stressful afternoon for you and you had every right to retreat. We're going to have another family dinner tonight," Helen says with a smile that tells Scully that she meant every word she just said. "Would you like some breakfast?"

"Thanks a lot, Helen, but I can fix something myself. You don't have to make breakfast for me."

"Nonsense! Our son wants you to try my pancakes. That is if you like blueberry pancakes."

Scully's heart skips a beat when she hears Helen call William 'their' son. She's moved by her generosity. She could have legally kept William from her and Mulder, could have tried to convince him it'd be better if he stopped looking for his birth parents, but she'd supported his search, and she chose to include her and Mulder in their lives. Helen's kindness and goodwill moves Scully to tears.

In addition, the offer of pancakes brings back fond childhood memories. Scully remembers sitting around the little kitchen table in gleeful anticipation together with Bill, Melissa, and Charlie, watching their mother's every move at the stove until she finally turned around and placed one of her legendary pancakes on each child's plate. She would gently smile at everyone before turning back to the stove to prepare the next round. It wasn't until Scully was an adult that she realized that although the pancakes were great, it was this moment of motherly love and care she enjoyed the most. When motherhood was still part of her life plan, she pictured herself at the stove some day, preparing the best pancakes on the planet for her own children. She'd never fulfilled that dream; someone else had.

"I haven't had homemade pancakes for years. When my siblings and I were little, my mother used to make them for us on Sundays after mass, when we behaved in church."

"Does your mother live close by?"

"She passed away last year."

The pain at the loss of her mother hasn't subsided one bit yet. Especially right now, with all the changes going on in her life, Scully wished she had her mother as someone to talk to. Maggie would've been happy to see her back together with Mulder, and she would've loved to see her reunite with her son.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Helen says, her voice full of compassion. She turns the stove off and puts the ladle back into the bowl with the pancake batter. She faces Scully, giving her her full attention.

"She believed that giving up William was the wrong decision. She didn't speak with me for weeks after I had gone through with it. At first, I was angry with her, feeling that she was leaving me in the lurch. I wanted her so badly for support, especially because Mulder wasn't there. One day I realized that she was simply mourning for her grandson and needed time to cope with the loss herself."

"Were you convinced it was the right decision?"

Scully grits her teeth, a lump building up in her throat, making it hard for her to swallow at all. "At the time, yes," she manages to get out, "I didn't see any other possibility to keep him safe. I didn't believe in my abilities to protect him anytime and anywhere."

"And later on?"

"Do you really want to know?" Scully asks. She's gotten to know Helen as a very sensitive and compassionate woman. She's certain, she'd suffer with her vicariously if she knew just how often Scully had rued her decision.

"I'm not sure, but I guess I know the answer anyway. I knew ever since I saw you looking at him at the gym, your eyes so full of love but also sadness." Helen casts her eyes down. "You did regret it later on, am I right? And you wished you'd never given him up. Oh, Dana, I'm so sorry," she whispers in a tear-stricken voice. She stares at her hands, unable to meet Scully's eyes.

"It's not your fault, Helen. You didn't do anything wrong."

Scully takes the other woman's hands in hers and squeezes them gently. She sees how guilt is tugging at her counterpart, guilt for having enjoyed motherhood based on another mother losing her child. Scully can sympathize so well. It must be similar to receiving a life-saving transplant from an organ donor, she thinks. Your lucky rescue is inextricably connected with somebody else's inevitable decease.

"You had every right to be happy with him," Scully feels the urge to tell her son's adoptive mother, "but you're right, I regretted it. I have every single day." She lets go of Helen's hand and pulls back, putting a palpable distance between them. "Even more so, I cursed myself for having been so weak. What I did to Mulder was unforgivable. Being able to come home to William was all that kept him going when he was hiding from the world. He never had the chance to really be with his son. His fatherhood was a succession of absence and short-lived moments, and finally loss." She sighs. "If I had persevered just a little longer, had tried just a littler harder, had had just a little more faith in God and his power to guide me, Mulder wouldn't have been deprived of what was so precious to him."

Helen shakes her head. "Why is it that you always think of what it meant for others first, Dana? How it affected William, what it did to Mulder, to your mother? What about you? Why didn't you allow yourself to be sorry for your own traumatized self? Why didn't you have any compassion for yourself, dear? I don't understand, honestly. You were a victim of circumstance, Dana, not an unnatural mother who got rid of her child because she was fed up with caring for a baby."

As Scully only stares at her, her unbelieving eyes glued to her, Helen begs her, "Tell me you didn't think of yourself as a loveless, uncaring mother, please!"

Tears are prickling at Scully's eyes now. She puts her hands in front of her face in an effort to hide how well the bull's eye has been hit, but Helen won't let her. She closes the gap between them and takes Scully's hands off her face ever so gently. "Honey, stop disrespecting yourself!"

"I don't know if I can," Scully admits meekly.

"You have to learn to forgive yourself, Dana. Everybody else has forgiven you already. William, Fox... I bet your mother has forgiven you, too. Mothers tend to be very lenient with their children."

If Helen only knew how much sorrow she'd caused her mother. And for all the pain she had brought into her mother's life following her decision to join the FBI, there had only been one thing she had chastised her for and that was giving up William. She'd never blamed her for Melissa's death, for frightening her heart close to insanity when she was abducted, then later diagnosed with cancer. She'd never condemned her for staying with a man who attracted danger and darkness like a magnet, nor for following him into the nothingness of a life as a wanted fugitive. The only thing Maggie had ever tried to argue her out of, yelled at her about and had frankly called terribly wrong, was Scully's decision to put William up for adoption.

"Her last words to us, to Mulder and me on her deathbed, were about William."

Helen gasps. "What did she say?"

"She just said she also had a son named William, referring to my oldest brother Bill. The next moment, she was gone. She had talked to my estranged younger brother Charlie on a phone I was holding to her ear only minutes before. Knowing that he was alright gave her the inner peace to let go. And she knew,... " Scully's voice has turned brittle and is not much more than a whisper now, "she knew Mulder and I would never have that kind of peace if things stayed the way they were."

Scully knows now that her mother's last words have led them directly to where they are here and now, in a remote, almost invisible country house together with their son and the people who took care of him whilst Mulder and she weren't able to. And while she's exceedingly thankful for that, she's also immensely sad that her mother didn't get the chance to reunite with her grandson. William held a special place in his grandmother's heart. Although Maggie adored all her grandchildren the same, she loved him particularly for having lightened up her daughter's existence as miraculously as he had.

"I see. That's why you came to Billy's basketball tournament," Helen concludes.

Scully nods. "Mulder was holding my mother's hand the moment she passed on. He realized she was trying to tell him something. He understood she wanted him to make sure I'd have the same inner peace when I leave this earthly life one day."

"And so he decided to look for William," Helen says to herself, now being able to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. "Your Fox is a good man, Dana. He loves you very much. He was so concerned about you last night. Dropped his knife and fork at the dinner table and followed you upstairs right away."

"My Fox..." Scully smiles at the choice of words, "Well, Mulder and I have been to hell and back together." She shakes her head. "I can't believe I once thought I could live without him."

Helen raises an eyebrow. "There was a time of separation?"

Scully nods. "I left him. Moved out of the house. It was a difficult time. Things were very complicated." She throws Helen a helpless look.

"You don't have to explain, Dana."

But Scully feels the need to explain. Maybe even more to herself than to Helen. "Life wasn't easy for us after..." She can't speak it out but she doesn't have to anyway. "After having longed for normalcy and steadiness for many years, we'd finally settled down. I worked as a pediatrician at the local hospital, had a home. It helped me a lot to cope with the emptiness William left behind. But I also had the love of my life dissolving into nothingness in front of my eyes. Mulder had nothing to hold on to, nothing that kept his head above the water. He was dragging me down into the darkness with him, and there was nothing I could do against it. I'd saved him so many times before, had rescued him from the most threatening situations, but I couldn't save him from this. For two people, who were so close for more than fifteen years, we were drifting apart at light speed. I knew I'd break if I followed him to where he was going, I had to protect myself. My dilemma was that I couldn't live with him, but I also couldn't live without him really."

"How did you get back together? You _are_ back together, aren't you?"

"We were always connected in one way or another. After I moved out, I still checked on him once in a while, to see whether he took his meds and lived a healthy lifestyle. Of course, he didn't. Interaction was difficult, but I simply couldn't leave him to his fate. I needed to know he was okay. He hated me for checking on him like some kind of physician. He didn't understand my motives, or maybe he misinterpreted them on purpose. He couldn't stand that I still felt responsible for him. He simply didn't want my help. Not this time. The only way he could deal with our breakup was with a clear cut, whereas the only way I could deal with it was to remain in touch."

"Sounds like you were both having a terrible time."

"One day, someone was seeking Mulder's expertise and asked me to contact him, as I was the only person who knew how to get hold of him. We ended up working together on a case, and I enjoyed it. We both enjoyed it. And then the FBI got involved and all of a sudden we were flashing badges side by side again, just like old times. It felt good, especially for Mulder. It was as if life had been breathed into him again, as if he had been awakened from a long sleep. He was thriving. He was so full of zest for action that I hadn't seem him in for a very long time. Going back to working together gave us part of our old lives back; the good part. We knew how to interact as fellow agents, and along the road we learned to interact as friends again. We were at a crime scene together when I received the call about my mother's heart attack. I wouldn't have survived her passing without him."

"You weren't together and Fox was there with you at mother's deathbed? That speaks volumes, Dana," Helen points out.

"My mother always loved him, and he loved to be loved by her. He had a difficult relationship with his own mother. My mom was the only person in my family who always accepted my decision to follow him."

"You're wearing his ring," Helen's eyes travel down to Scully's hands.

Scully instinctively touches the band on her left ring finger and spins it around. "Uhm, yes, but we're not legally married. We, uh, had William...out of wedlock." She glances at Helen from the corner of her eye.

"Dana," Helen chuckles slightly, "there's no need to look guilty."

"I just thought,..." Scully licks her lower lip in a twinge of nervousness, "as you're regular church goers."

"We are, but you're also a woman of faith," Helen says, pointing at Scully's cross necklace. "And one of the tenets of faith is, 'judge not,' yes? Especially when we know nothing about the personal circumstances under which certain choices were made."

Scully throws Helen a grateful look. "You're a wonderful person, Helen. You know that, don't you?"

Helen gives a short laugh. "I haven't been told lately, but it's very kind of you to say it, thank you!" She squeezes Scully's hand quickly. "Coffee?"

"I'd rather have some tea."

"No problem." Helen opens the cabinet with the mugs and another one with the tea bags - she knows the kitchen far better than Scully. "There's only Darjeeling, I hope that's okay."

"That's perfectly fine," Scully says.

Helen fills a kettle with water and puts it onto the stove. Her back still turned toward Scully, she gets back to the earlier topic, "You _are_ wearing a ring," she repeats in a suggestive tone of voice, "so you are a couple again." It's not meant as a question.

Scully purses her lips, then smiles. "Yes. Mulder brought me home after the basketball game and we started talking. About William. About us. About us and William. It was a good and much needed conversation. I moved back in shortly after we received Will's letter."

Helen gasps shortly, but her eyes are sparkling. "So it was William, actually, who brought you back together!"

Scully inhales sharply and holds her breath for a moment. "I've never seen it that way, but I suppose that's what happened."

"But that's wonderful, Dana, isn't it? You cried so much over losing him, and I can imagine your grief was mainly responsible for drifting away from each other, but eventually he made the two of you get together again. That's what your son did for you after all you had done for him."

Tears are brimming in Helen's eyes when she looks at Scully whose eyes widen at the beauty of the idea. The whistling tea kettle saves the two women from totally losing their composure. Helen reaches for it but Scully holds her back. She pours the hot water into the waiting mug and dips the tea bag in.

"I have to thank you, Helen. For everything. Mulder and I are so grateful."

"Stop it now, would you!"

Scully is a little stunned about Helen's harsh reaction. "Stop what?"

"Thanking us over and over again as if we were doing you some kind of favor. We owe so much to you. We should be thanking you!"

"Us?" Scully knits her eyebrows, her face suggesting that she really doesn't know what the Van de Kamps should be thanking them for.

"For entrusting us with your most precious treasure. I know you didn't choose us in particular, but your faith made you leave it to the Lord to give your son to our keeping, and that's what Walter and I have to thank you for. And there's something else we can't be grateful enough for."

Helen swallows hard. Scully looks expectantly at her.

"Walter and I love Billy like our own," Helen starts but falls silent again.

"We know," Scully says "and we're-"

Helen throws her hands up in the air to stop Scully from talking. "Uh uh, no Dana, now it's my time to speak. Walter and I want to let you know that we're boundlessly thankful that you're not claiming your rights as William's biological parents. If you took him back, it would kill us."

Scully's jaw drops and her eyes widen. "Good grief, Helen, we'd never do that! Why would we tear him away from his familiar surroundings and from the people he loves and cares for? That would be the most selfish thing! Besides, we don't have any legitimate rights. I gave them up when I signed the adoption papers. _You_ are William's parents, Walter and you. Mulder and I are people he hardly knows."

"Well, that's what we're here for, aren't we? To let him get to know you."

"And we can't thank you enough for allowing us-"

"Shhh," Helen cuts her off again, wiping some tears off her cheek, "we should stop this right now! I think we've thanked each other enough. We're here because we all love and care for the same boy. A boy, who when it comes to his parents doesn't even think in categories like biological or adoptive anymore. Last night, he told me he's got four parents, and that he's awfully pleased about it."

Scully stifles a sob, so does Helen. The two women stare at each other for a moment, then the dam breaks. They fall into a tight hug, crying their eyes out on each other's shoulder. It relieves so much of the tension that has been building up inside each of them since they first met at the high school gym. Tension rising out of different fears, but still out of fears circling around the same boy, fifteen-year old William shooting hoops outside in the backyard.

It takes them quite a while to regain their composure, and when they look at each other through puffy eyes they start laughing.

"I think this is the beginning of a wonderful friendship, Dana. I feel so close to you, and I'm so glad you came to that basketball game."

"Same here," Scully says with a bright smile on her face. "I was deeply touched when you said earlier that we were going to have another family dinner tonight. Do you really believe we can become a family?"

"I meant what I said. We are a family. Probably not a very conventional one, but I couldn't care less. It's the best way to be a family I can think of because it's based on love and care and trust and gratefulness."

Before the women can become teary again, they're pulled out of their emotional roller-coaster ride by a powerful voice.

"Morning, Ladies!" Mulder exclaims cheerfully, his lighthearted exterior somewhat crumbling when he makes eye-contact with the two women who are obviously discomposed and edgy. "Uhm, am I interrupting something?"

"No, you're not," Scully says, closing the gap between them with a few quick strides. She flings her arms around his neck and places a short but sweet kiss on his mouth. "Good morning, Mulder!"

Mulder, being absolutely stunned about this high level of public affection coming from Scully, seizes the moment and puts his arms around her waist. "Good morning, Scully," he replies with a loving smile on his face.

Helen looks at them. If she needed another proof that her son's birth parents were a couple, this little exchange of endearment would've served as one.

"Will told us to let you know he's outside practicing three-point shots," Scully tells Mulder with a mischievous grin she cannot suppress.

"It looks like the kid won't have mercy on some middle-aged out-of-practice dude," Mulder whines.

"I'm afraid he won't, Fox! He's ambitious and competitive." Helen says. "How about some blueberry pancakes before you step into the ring?"

"Sources say they're the best pancakes you can get, Mulder."

"What sources?"

"Reliable sources," Scully says. "Your opponent had quite a few."

"I see." Mulder peers through the small kitchen window just as William sinks a three-point shot effortlessly into the basket and a nervous "Oh, boy!" escapes his mouth.

Behind Mulder's back, Scully and Helen look at each other and share a silent chuckle.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

Mulder steps outside with a coffee mug in his hand. He throws a quick glance at William who's practicing three-point shots a few yards away, he then makes his presence known to the person sitting on the porch. "Good morning, Walter."

"Oh hey, Fox! How are ya? Sleep okay?"

"Eventually, yes. Scully and I talked quite a bit, and at some point, my stomach remembered that I skipped dinner. I had a midnight snack and savored Helen's roast. Your wife is a marvelous cook."

"She is indeed." Walter smiles proudly. "How is Dana?"

"She's doing okay."

"She seemed pretty upset last night."

"Yeah, well, she was. William's adoption was the most terrible situation of her life, and believe me, she'd been in terrible situations before."

"Women and motherhood..." Walter ponders. "Shall we go for a walk? Or do you think it's dangerous to walk away from the house?"

Mulder shakes his head. Skinner and he reconnoitered the surroundings and had an electric fence put up with around the perimeter of the property. They made sure the site would be a safe haven, a place where William's adoptive and birth parents would be able to concentrate on conversing with each other and not on keeping potential intruders away.

Mulder empties his coffee, puts the mug down on the porch banister, and places a hand on Walter's shoulder. "Good idea! It should be safe."

Both men walk a few minutes in comfortable silence. The weather is nice, the temperature still agreeable as the sun hasn't reached its highest spot on the sky yet. It's Walter who breaks the silence first, voicing some thoughts which obviously have been on his mind for some time.

"Helen had a difficult time when we tried for a baby and she didn't conceive. At first, we just thought we needed more time, but after a year, we began to worry that something might be wrong with one of us. Every month, we'd be hoping for it to have happened, every month we got disappointed. Then we tried IVF, and it was even worse because we put so much hope in it, although we knew the chances weren't that good. One day, we were thrilled to find out it had worked only to be devastated a few weeks later when Helen had a miscarriage."

"Shit, Walter, that's awful. I'm so sorry."

"Yeah, we had a terrible time afterward."

"Scully and I also tried IVF. But she didn't even get pregnant."

Mulder has surprised himself by opening up to Walter so easily. Besides Scully, he hasn't talked with anybody about this and he hardly knows William's adoptive father to begin with. But somehow, he feels connected with him and sharing these intimacies seems almost natural.

"How often did you try?" Walter asks.

"Only once."

Mulder thinks back to the day he waited for Scully to return from the appointment at Dr. Parenti's, the day he told her to never give up on a miracle. The hopelessness and sadness in her eyes had broken his heart and he felt the need to give her something to believe in, anything, just to ease her mind a little. If he was honest, he'd have to say that he didn't believe the miracle he told her to hope for would ever happen. How wrong he'd been.

"We tried three times," Walter continues, "and it got harder with every failure. Shortly before the fourth attempt Helen said she wanted to quit and would rather go for an adoption. It was the best decision we ever made, even though it took us another three years until the miracle happened and we got the call."

William, the multiple miracle. His existence was a miracle for Scully and Mulder, and also for the Van de Kamps. Only that the Van de Kamp miracle had come with a happy ending, whereas for Scully and him the happiness it entailed was short-lived and afterward there was only despair and sorrow.

How unjust destiny was!

Why were the Van de Kamps allowed to be happy, and Scully and he condemned to be sad? Mulder's taken off guard at how violently the injustice of it all still gnaws at him. That for all they sacrificed in their years-long effort to be of service to a greater cause, they weren't begrudged as much as a fleeting moment of unburdened happiness.

Walter keeps talking, pulling Mulder back to the here and now. "I was terrified at first, you know?" he says, "unsure whether I'd be a good dad to the kid."

 _Oh yeah, really?_ flashes through Mulder's mind. How well he can relate to that terrifying feeling!

"Helen was so sure of herself, ready to take over the responsibility from one day to the next. She knew deep inside she would be able to love this child and care for him as if he were her own."

Just like Scully was when Emily showed up in her life out of the blue, Mulder remembers. Ready to be her mom within a blink of an eye, even though she knew it'd be another story in her life without a happy ending. Maybe women are this way, always ready to give their hearts to a child in need.

"There's a reason why a pregnancy lasts nine months," Walter interrupts Mulder's musings once more. "It gives men time to prepare for fatherhood. As parents, we're simply not as intuitive and visceral as women. Women handle becoming a parent more easily, with less inhibitions, simply relying on their instincts and their natural ability to be a good mother. I had plenty of time to get used to the idea of becoming a father, but it was always hypothetical. If Helen conceived, if IVF worked, if we ever got to adopt a child...there was always an 'if', but suddenly it became so very real. I was told I'd be a father to a toddler the next day, and it scared me to death!"

Walter strokes his hair as if he hasn't fully recovered from the shock yet.

It gives Mulder an unexpected kind of relief to realize that Walter also got jumped by his fatherly role in some way. It's soothing somehow to know, though, that he hasn't been the only man to fail as a perfect father-to-be. The circumstances were entirely different, and there's no way Mulder can tell him his own story. He's sure that having come back from the dead is not really something Walter will easily understand as an excuse for Mulder's initial hesitance to his parental duties.

"But as soon as he was there, I couldn't imagine having ever been without him," Walter concludes.

Mulder has to agree with Walter again. Thinking back to the first time he had seen and held his son, he remembers how he also felt that he'd never want to be without him anymore, ever. Unfortunately, his story had turned out differently.

"It's funny how quickly they inhabit your heart, isn't it?" Mulder mumbles, his mind being set back to the short time he was caring for his son. "They don't do so very much, just look at you with their big eyes, smile at you with their toothless mouths, burp on your shoulder, but you're instantly hooked for life."

He was only allowed to spend a few sweet weeks with his son but had never forgotten how overwhelming the experience was. Scully gave him the most precious of gifts.

It doesn't go unnoticed by Walter that Mulder has become withdrawn and lost in thought. Sadness is spreading between them, heavy and thick like fog on a moist, chilly meadow on a fall morning.

"Sorry, man, that was very insensitive. We got him and you lost him."

Mulder sighs deeply. "It's alright, Walt. We can't talk about him and not touch that particular circumstance. You raised our son. He's yours. That's the way it is."

"But that's not how it needs to remain, does it? We're here to change something. This is what this weekend is about. You're not disappearing again, are you? Bill would be devastated. He looked for you for years, and now he's so pleased he found you."

"What about you, Walter? Helen and you? Are you also pleased he found us? I always thought that adoptive parents dreaded nothing more than the biological parents showing up out of nowhere trying to reconnect with their child."

Walter chooses not to answer Mulder's question. Instead, he steers the conversation in a different direction. Mulder can't tell whether it's because he's hit the bull's eye or because Walter doesn't deem it worthwhile to cast any attention to this particular question.

"What kind of father did you want to be, Fox?"

"Ugh, Walt, would you mind calling me Mulder?"

"Oh, okay, M-Mulder."

"I know it may sound a bit awkward to you, but I can assure you, not to me. On the contrary, only very few people have ever called me Fox."

"Bill does."

Mulder nods and murmurs a non-committal 'Hmm' in response.

Somehow he likes it when William calls him Fox, he can't really explain why. Maybe for the same reason he liked it when Margaret Scully called him Fox, or when Scully does so once in a while. Being called Fox is a synonym for intimacy and family, for being so close to the other person to allow them to call him by his unbeloved first name.

Of course, Mulder likes it even more when William calls him Dad. It pleases his ear and warms his heart. The most wonderful word by far coming out of his son's mouth is the word 'Mom' when addressed to Scully, though. Mulder's had the honor of hearing it a few times already and it made his heart jump for joy every single time.

"Anyway...Mulder...what kind of father did you want to be?"

Mulder shrugs. "I don't know. The kind to have fun with, I guess. Who teaches his boy how to hit a baseball properly and shoot hoops. I had dreams about building sand castles with my son and shooting rockets up into the sky. There was a time, I was known for my buttered popcorn on movie nights, although Scully never wanted hers to be buttered," he tells Walter.

"Popcorn without butter tastes like styrofoam!" Walter throws in, shaking his head as if he cannot believe someone would even consider eating something like this.

Mulder chuckles. "Those were my words, but she always insisted on it, and of course I always made some without butter for her." The movie nights they had been having in their unremarkable house are among Mulder's most treasured memories. "I often imagined what it would be like to make a bigger bowl for the kiddo and me with lots of butter and a smaller one just plain for Scully for a family movie night. We'd watch one of those animated pictures, like _Cars_ or _Ice Age_ , the three of us cuddled up on the couch under a big cozy blanket."

He heaves a heavy sigh, then presses his lips together. He's talked himself into a painful frame of mind now, his throbbing temples slowly inciting a headache.

"We tried to fill the void with a dog we allowed to join us on the couch. It didn't really work, but it was good to have him around anyway."

"Mind if I ask you a personal question, Fox? Sorry...Mulder?" Walter says, suddenly seeming to find something particularly interesting on the ground beneath his feet.

"Hmm," Mulder answers, unsure where Walter is heading. He feels they've been talking about quite personal matters already.

"Have you ever tried to find him? To get him back?" Walter is still not able to look Mulder in the eye.

"No," Mulder says, his voice steady and strong, "not until we showed up at the basketball tournament." He wants Walter to know he's telling him the truth. "And getting him back never was in the plan. It still isn't."

"But you would've wanted him back. I mean, if you had the chance." It's a conclusion, not a question.

"You bet," Mulder admits silently.

Of course, he would've wanted him back. He had thought of knocking at the door to the adoption agency more than once, of grabbing Skinner by the lapels and shaking the information about William's whereabouts out of him, even contacting the cigarette smoking son of a bitch seemed to be an option, assuming he still watched them. It was Scully who'd always talked him out of it, reminding him he'd undermine their efforts to keep him safe. She demanded he suppress his desire, for the boy's sake. That was why he had taken her to William's basketball game without telling her beforehand, because although she was craving answers about her son so badly, she'd always put William's interests above her own.

"Sorry for asking." Walter buries his hands in his pockets and nervously shifts his weight from one foot to the other. "It's just that at the beginning, maybe through the first few years, we were always afraid he might be taken from us. I know the fear was unfounded, he was officially given to us by a family court, signed and sealed, but still, the idea that one day his birth parents would show up at our front door and tell us it was all a big mistake they want to undo, haunted us for a long time."

"Scully decided on a closed adoption exactly for that reason, to keep us from ever trying to track him down. There were only two people who knew his whereabouts, our former boss at the FBI and a fellow agent. And they swore to never tell us."

"But you did, eventually. Track him down, I mean."

"Yes," Mulder breathes, his voice low and thick. "I couldn't watch Scully suffer any longer. When her mother died last year, after finding her peace in reconciling with her long-estranged youngest son, Scully almost broke. After the funeral she confided in me for the first time about how much she was longing for answers about William. How much her heart broke a little every day, thinking of him and not knowing anything about him, not even whether he was happy and safe."

Walter stares at Mulder. "For the _first_ time? That was 14 years after he'd been given up!"

Mulder chuckles bitterly. "All these years, we've been really good at avoiding the topic, at not addressing the elephant in the room."

"You never talked about him?" Walter says, not hiding his perplexity.

"Almost, yup, which was insane because he was always there anyway. He was omnipresent in our heads and our hearts. I could see it in how Scully looked at boys his age, at a kid fighting with his mother for a popsicle in the cashier's queue at a grocery store, for example, or when a family of three walked by, mother and father both holding their son's hands and throwing him up in the air."

Mulder remembers one particular painful situation while they were on the run. They were having a quick lunch at a diner in some forgotten Midwestern town and watched a mother with her two children at a table close to them. The boy, maybe six or seven years old, teased his little sister until she was crying and wouldn't stop despite his mother's angry, admonitory words. He started playing with his burger and fries and squeezed some ketchup into his drink. The mother got so unnerved she shouted at him to behave, and when he stuck his tongue out, she screamed that she would give him up for adoption if he did it again. That, of course, was too much for Scully. She got up, strode up to where they were sitting, looked at the mother through furious eyes, hissing at her, 'How dare you threaten your child with giving him up for adoption? If you knew what it's like you wouldn't be saying something so ridiculous and stupid.' Mulder instantly threw a bill onto their table and pulled Scully away from the table before the woman could reply with something impolite. When they were sitting in the car again, Scully broke into tears, lashing out against him when he tried to put his arms around her. It took a long time until she got over the incident. Same for Mulder.

"When we moved into our house, Scully downright banned me from even considering the spare upstairs bedroom as being something other than his potential room. It was one of the rare occasions she actually spoke his name. 'This is the perfect room for William,' she said without looking at me. It remained untouched and neither one of us brought it up again. Although the simple idea that he might ever move into that room was totally quixotic."

"Do you realize that you always use 'him' instead of his name when you speak of the past? You really plunged yourselves into repressing the memories, didn't you?"

"I don't know why but we somehow thought that coping with the loss would be easier if we didn't talk about him too much, and that included voicing his name."

"Was it?" Walter asks tentatively.

"No, not even in the slightest. It was slowly eating us up. Scully buried herself in work to distract herself, and I retreated more and more into my own world, away from her. I couldn't bear to see her hurting anymore. It killed our relationship."

"What do you mean _killed_? We thought you were a couple! Gosh, we put you up in a room together!"

Mulder gives a short chuckle. If Walter knew how many times they had slept in a room, in a bed together, even before having been involved.

"Don't worry, Walt, we're fine. I was lucky, Scully came back home. But she had indeed left me, and I can't blame her for it. I pushed her away. I was unable to cope with the constant pain in her eyes over the loss of our son. I felt so incapacitated to console her that in return I wouldn't allow her to console me either. I enclosed myself inside my office and became more or less a hermit. Even if you give me credit that I still had to hide, there was no need to exclude her from my life in that way. I put an unnecessary distance between us. That was cruel. I was hurting her, I knew, but I simply couldn't help it."

"You were in mourning yourself," Walter points out.

"Sure." Mulder sighs.

He discussed all this with the therapist he'd finally decided to see after Scully was gone. Today he knows why it had gone that far, why with what they had been through beforehand, they hardly stood a chance to weather this crisis unharmed. The post-William years they had spent in survival mode, their minds only on how to make it through the next day, left no room whatsoever to care for their emotional wounds. And when they had finally found the safety and quiet to be able to deal with them, they had already turned into scars. Any medical school rookie can tell that once a wound is scarred, it can't be treated anymore, one simply has to live with the degenerated tissue. That was what they'd tried to do but failed miserably.

"It would take too long to explain the dynamics between us leading to that particular point," Mulder continues speaking, "but let me tell you this much, I wasn't strong enough to be weak in front of her. I was the man, I thought that I had to be the strong one, that I had to be her rock, and since I wasn't able to fulfill my own expectations, I chose to be nothing for her either. One day, the downward spiral had gotten so much momentum that I wasn't able to stop it anymore."

Walter takes a deep inhale through his nose and lets the air flow out slowly through his mouth.

"Ouff, that sounds bad, man."

"Yeah, pretty bad. When Scully eventually diagnosed me with depression, issuing a prescription for antidepressants, all I did was yell at her to leave me alone. That was the end. A couple of weeks later she left."

"I don't know so much about the disease pattern of the syndrome, but aren't you supposed to not leave a depressed person alone?"

"Not in my case. She tried to help me, but I simply wouldn't let her. The harder she tried, the more I retreated from her. I didn't want to be rescued. Only when she was gone, did I realize that I'd lost the last good thing I had in my life. She may have left partly out of self-protection, fair enough, but she also saw that only I could pull myself out of my misery. She had the strength to put an end to our relationship to give me a chance to heal. She had the strength I lacked."

Walter shakes his head and stares past Mulder, mumbling, "women are so much stronger than men. I could tell you a similar story of Helen and me. It was my fault that Helen couldn't conceive, you have to know. We found out after numerous examinations. I felt so guilty, like I was robbing her of her dream of a family."

Mulder groans inwardly. Leaving the love of your life unable to have a child; yet another experience he shares with Walter. But he won't start explaining the role he played in Scully's barrenness. He's been to the depths of his soul long enough for today. It did him good, though. Beside his therapist, he's never had a male confidant to share his thoughts and emotions with. He'd never felt he needed one; he had Scully. Discourse had always been an important part of their relationship, but one day he lost his sounding board and after that things took a turn for the worse.

"Hey, Fox," William yells from the driveway where the hoop is fixed above the garage door, "are you ready for our challenge yet?"

Mulder waves at him. "I'll be right there, buddy" he shouts back. He throws Walter a compassion demanding look. "This is going to be tough. He won't spare me anything, I'm afraid."

Walter frowns and pats Mulder on the shoulder. "You know, I'm not a real sports talent and after a day of work on our farm all I ever wanted was to get under a shower, into some comfortable clothes, eat dinner, and finally hit the couch. I knew Bill would've liked me to join him in his athletic abilities, but I could never bring myself to get involved like other fathers, the ones who become the coach of their school basketball team or practice curve balls with their kids on Sundays. That's something I've failed him at," he admits, and Mulder sees that he hasn't come to terms with it.

"He's become a good athlete anyway. He really is a very good basketball player," Mulder acknowledges.

"Your genes," Walter says with a smile and makes Mulder think back to what Scully said last night, that she could've chosen a real champ's sperm for the IVF but had wanted him instead.

"He might want to pursue it and see how far he can get, at least earn himself a college scholarship."

"Nah, he's already set his mind on a career in medicine. Anyway, I don't think he'll need a sports scholarship. His brilliant grades will get him into medical school. He's a very goal-oriented, industrious, and ambitious student."

"Well, those would be Scully's genes then," Mulder points out, although it had been his own witty brain that got him into Oxford University; not his father's connections, nor his mother's money.

"He definitely got a good set of genes from the both of you."

The subject makes Mulder's mind swirl around what they found out about Scully's genome recently, that her DNA is partly alien. He's quite sure that she passed it on to William and that this is why their son has been the center of interest of who knows how many different forces - alien, human, or both.

Mulder decides to steer the conversation away from genetics into shallower waters.

"Don't underestimate the influence you've been having on his development, Walter. Helen and you have raised him into a decent, friendly, and polite young man. Scully's and my genes didn't have anything to do with the personality he's become."

"Thanks, man. That means a lot to me. To us. We always hoped we were raising him in compliance with what his birth parents had in mind for him, that they'd appreciate what we were doing."

"We do, Walt. I can speak on behalf of Scully when I tell you that we're more than pleased with what you've been giving him all these years."

William interrupts them again. "Dad! Would you stop besieging Fox with your questions? It's my turn now!" he shouts from his spot under the hoop.

"There's someone waiting for you," Walter says, elbowing Mulder in the side.

"Wish me luck! I'll need it!" Mulder replies, his face contorted into a whiny grimace.

"He's gonna frazzle you out!" Walter laughs, patting Mulder on the back, nudging him a bit forward.

"I'm afraid so!" Mulder sighs, rolling up his sleeves and heading toward the place of his inevitable defeat.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

"That was fun!" William exclaims happily, letting himself fall onto the stairs of the porch. He's just outplayed Mulder at a best-of-five basketball challenge from the three-point line. "I wished my dad would shoot hoops with me."

'I _am_ your dad,' Mulder wants to cry out but recollects himself. He's William's biological father, his begetter, his genetic roots, nothing else. A man has to earn the label 'dad', and Walter has done that for William. His own role in his son's life has been so picayune, it's close to non-existent.

"Do you have a hoop at home?" Mulder asks.

"Yes, we do. Dad put it up for my eighth or ninth birthday, I can't remember exactly. He even paved the driveway for me to be able to practice dribbling. It was a loose gravel surface before."

"That was nice of him."

"Yeah, it was. But he never played with me."

"Well, you can't have all the cookies," Mulder supplies. "He's a good dad."

"The best," William adds.

Mulder feels a sting in his heart and reprimands himself for it right away. That's what they always wanted, right? That William had the best adoptive parents in the world? So why does he secretly rejoice over the fact that shooting hoops is something he can do with his boy but not Walter? How come he wants Walter to not be the perfect dad? He feels bad for it but he wishes his son to see something in him he doesn't see in Walter. He craves nothing more but a special place in William's heart.

Simply having these thoughts makes Mulder sick inside. He knows Scully is much more selfless than he can ever be, taking comfort in the knowledge that Helen has been such a good mother to William all these years, that she has loved and cared for William just as she would've done. For Mulder, it's not so easy to accept that he'd been so easily replaced. Well, he hadn't put the bar up very high, so probably anyone would've been a better dad than he. Actually, he can't rule out the idea that the boy was lucky to have been spared a father like him.

He hears William apologize through his bitter contemplation. "Uh, what?"

"Sorry for having called him the best dad. I didn't mean to offend you."

"It's alright, Will," Mulder says, moved by the boy's sympathy but also feeling stupid because of the childish and uncalled for jealousy which had just been invading his thoughts.

Being a good dad means so much more than shooting hoops or making buttered popcorn, Mulder thinks. Walter has given William love and safety, he raised him, cared for him, taught him the lessons of life and protected him against its rigors. He gave him the roots Scully had to cut by giving him up for adoption. He was - and still is - the best dad.

"Did you ever think of having another child?" Mulder hears William ask him.

Mulder needs to collect his thoughts for a moment before he's able to answer. He might have, but he knew Scully would've never been able to cope with it. So he never lost a word about her demanding they care for birth control.

"Not really. Our lives were crazy at the time, totally inappropriate for an infant. We'd have to drag it through the country, buckled up in a car for many hours straight, with no chance to make friends and have fun like a normal child."

"Because you had to hide?"

"Exactly. The kid wouldn't have been able to go to school even."

"That sounds good, though," William says with a grin.

"Oh, Scully would've been a relentless private teacher, of that I'm sure!" Mulder grins back.

William is quiet for a moment, maybe trying to picture being home schooled by Scully.

"Is that what your life was like? I mean driving around the country for hours? Without social interaction? Without fun?"

"More or less," Mulder says.

They interacted and they had fun, but only with each other. It was enough for them at the beginning. They had a lot to catch up on. It was the first time they could act openly on their feelings, and they made the most of it. But as time progressed, isolation took its toll on them, especially on Scully. She missed her family, her mother in particular. And although she never blamed him for her situation, insisting it had been her own decision to join him in his flight, he couldn't help feeling guilty over having inflicted this on her. If William had been with them, it would've only doubled his guilt.

"Are you going to tell me why you and Dana had to hide?"

"Well, it's a very long and complicated story. We got into trouble with very powerful people and I overplayed my hand, made a lot of enemies. They threw me in jail based on false accusations and threatened to never let me out again."

No way is he going to tell him that he was convicted, albeit falsely, of having committed murder and condemned to death by lethal injection. Mulder doubts William would believe what he'd tell him about the survival capability of super-soldiers and an alien-human hybrid race.

Or maybe he would?

"Scully…Dana…she helped me break out of prison."

William's eyes widen. "Cool!"

William's excitement makes Mulder chuckle. Of course, to a sixteen year-old teenager this part of their lives sounds like one big, thrilling adventure story, like a Hollywood blockbuster he'd watch with his friends at the local movie theater. Only that in Hollywood blockbusters, in the end, the good ones obtain the upper hand while the evil ones get what they deserve. In their case, they'd sacrificed so much and had gotten almost nothing in return.

"Yeah, she was pretty cool," Mulder ponders. "She was the coolest babe you can imagine," he raves absentmindedly. William giggles.

Mulder remembers the way Scully took the stand and stood up to the men who put him on trial in that fake courtroom. How her efforts to get him out of there didn't wane a bit no matter how hopeless the endeavor seemed to be. How, after the guilty verdict had been spoken, she sent Reyes, Doggett and Skinner to pull him out of his cell and waited for him at the gates of the military base in the darkness, ready to leave her old life behind and follow him into an unsure future with nothing save the clothes she was wearing.

"Your mother…Dana…was…she simply was…" He lacks the words to describe what she was. She was his life buoy, his guardian angel, his light in the darkness that much is clear, but how can he explain the indefinite scope of his worship and admiration for her to a teenager?

"How come she felt it was okay for herself to live that kind of life with you but at the same time didn't want me to be there?" There's no offense in William's voice, no blame or accusation, only curiosity and urge for knowledge.

"Believe me, Will, she would've wanted you to be there! I bet she daydreamed you were in the back of the car, strapped in your baby seat, as often as I did."

Mulder caught her a few times staring in the rear view mirror at the spot where William's car seat would've been fixed. A cold fist squeezed his heart whenever they were in a grocery store passing the baby food aisle or trying to ignore children's apparel whenever they had to shop for clothes. On William's fourth birthday, he found her standing in front of a little supermarket's cake counter, staring at a cake covered in blue sugar icing, the words 'for our birthday boy' written across in joyful letters. He can't recall how they survived that day.

He shakes his head to dispel the painful flashbacks and continues explaining, "It was okay for her because it was an autonomous decision she made for her own adult life. She had to live with the consequences of her actions, and believe me she did with grim determination. It was not okay for you, though, because you were an independent human being, a little innocent boy having the right to lead a normal life far away from threat, fear, and chase. She couldn't bring herself to decide for you to have a life like ours."

"You could've had another child after you'd settled down in that country house you told me about. It sounds like a place similar to where we live. You were still young enough to have children."

"And do what? Replace you?" Mulder shakes his head. "No, Will, it wouldn't have been fair to the child. We would've put so much hope into it, it could've never lived up to that."

William looks at Mulder his eyes traveling from head to toe. He seems to evaluate the words he's going to say. Finally, he speaks. "You would've made great parents," he says, "I call myself lucky to have been your son."

Have been?

The words feel like a stab in his heart. Mulder takes a sharp inhale.

"I mean," William splutters self-consciously as if what hit Mulder so deeply was written on his forehead, "I still _am_ , right?"

Mulder can't help but answer by pulling William into an embrace, folding his arms around the boy and pressing him to his chest. He kisses his hair and whispers to his scalp, "you are, buddy! You definitely are and always have been!"

Father and son remain entangled for a few moments, tears running down both of their faces. Whereas Mulder is not ashamed of them, he can tell William feels a bit awkward when he brushes them away eagerly with both hands as soon as they break apart.

"Will I see you again?" William asks.

"If you want to, and if your parents are okay with it."

William ponders for a moment, and Mulder can literally see the thoughts flurrying in his head. He furrows his eyebrows and wrinkles his nose just like Scully does when she's racking her brain about something.

"Of course, I want to! I have so many questions for you! And I'm pretty sure my parents won't mind. They helped me with my search for you," he grins sheepishly, "and I think they like you."

"Your parents are wonderful, Will. Don't ever forget that."

"Yeah, they are. Although sometimes I'd like to launch them up into outer space!"

Mulder gives a short, hearty laugh. "I can imagine! Who does not for just once want to launch their parents into outer space?" Mulder, on his part, had wanted to break his birth father's neck more than once, but that's another story.

"What are the X-Files?" William asks in such a casual way as if he was asking about what time it was, taking his father completely off guard.

Mulder chokes violently, hoping he misheard. "What?"

"What. Are. The X-Files?" The boy repeats his question, his voice signaling now that he's determined to get an answer.

"How do you know about them?"

"I Googled you."

Mulder is not an expert when it comes to internet search engines but he doubts that information about the X-Files can be found so easily. Scully's and his work was confidential, classified even within the FBI, how could a sixteen year-old get hold of them?

"And what exactly did you find?" he probes.

"Not much, that's why I asked. I found out that Dana and you worked for a unit called the X-Files for eight years before it was shut down. Interestingly enough, I couldn't find anything else. The only links I was able to follow lead to an organization called MUFON and a somewhat mysterious group under the name of The Lone Gunmen."

Mulder gasps. William found information about his three friends who'd been more than cautious when it came to covering up their tracks? How was that even possible?

"That information is available on the internet?" Mulder can't quite believe it.

"Well…it's not like it lies around there in the open, easy to access for everyone."

"I see. So how did you get hold of it then? You weren't hacking FBI servers, were you? That's a federal offense," Mulder hurries to tell his son.

"No, I didn't."

Mulder heaves a sigh of relief.

"A friend of mine was," the boy admits with a nonchalant grin developing on his face.

Mulder winces.

"Relax, dad, he's really good at it! He knows how to disguise his identity while online. He started hacking the servers of our school when he was ten to get the answers of upcoming exams. He never got caught!" he tells his father, and the pride about his source displayed on his face speaks volumes.

Why is Mulder so surprised anyway? William is their son, Scully's and his. They're both curious people, hungry to solve a mystery when it crosses their path. This is part of their DNA, and they passed it on obviously. William had set his mind on finding information about his birth parents and pursued the quest no matter what with the help of trustworthy friends, just like the younger version of himself. Mulder can't keep the corners of his mouth from rising into a slight smile.

He evaluates the situation. "So, you found out about MUFON and The Lone Gunmen, and you know that your mother and I worked for the X-Files. What else do you want to know?"

"Who were The Lone Gunmen? I read a couple of their magazines. Cool stuff!"

Mulder shakes his head and chuckles. He hasn't thought of them for a while and a part of him is thankful for William having called them back into his mind.

"They were really good friends of mine. Good people I could always rely on." 'Who helped me save your mother several times,' he almost adds. Without them, he would've never been able to retrieve the vial with the chip that cured her cancer, let alone understand what it was.

"And MUFON?"

"MUFON stands for Mutual UFO Network," Mulder explains.

"Aaand?" William probes, clearly aware that Mulder is holding back all the interesting stuff.

"And what?"

"What did you and Dana have to do with it? If the X-Files had anything to do with UFOs and what the Gunmen wrote about, it must have been pretty exciting to work in that field. The paranormal, the occult, the extraterrestrial have always interested me. Maybe I inherited that from you, Fox. I want to know everything about it."

Mulder hesitates to answer because he knows William won't like it, but what can he do?

"I can't tell you, Will."

"Why not?" William asks, disappointment written all over his face.

Mulder inhales deeply. He rakes his hair, jumps up from the stairs and starts pacing the porch.

"Because the information is not good for you! You've got to trust me, buddy, you don't _want_ to know what Dana and I saw while we were working on the X-Files." 'And especially not what happened to us,' he manages to gulp down before the words could leave his mouth.

Mulder knows he sounds patronizing, and he remembers saying something similar to Scully many, many years ago, when he'd found out about the date the world would end and didn't dare to tell her because he thought she wouldn't be able to handle it. He was feeling as bad then as he is now, holding back information from someone who's seeking it so badly. It ate him up how fiercely Scully fought for him, for his life, begging him to open up to her, to help her in saving his life, implying it was not a lone wolf's fight. But how could he have told her that the apocalypse was imminent? That all their sacrifices had been for naught? That they hadn't been able to save a single life? That their son wouldn't live long enough to become a teenager? His heart was bleeding whenever he looked into her eyes, and he knew it would continue doing so as long as he lived, so his life coming to an end in the near future wasn't even such a dreadful idea.

At that moment, his remaining lifespan seemed so unworth living. His quest had been condemned to failure from the start, he'd lost his son, he'd never get out of that prison cell anyway, so why bother? He knew he was disappointing her, but he hoped that somehow she'd be able to lead a happy life after he was gone, in sweet ignorance of what was going to happen December 21st, 2012. He even hoped she'd find love again, with a decent man, not a weirdo like him. He really and truly hoped she'd leave him to his fate, forget him and fall in love with someone else. What a crazy thought that was! The forerunners of his depression had obviously made themselves felt already.

It was the darkest time of his life, the only person with an ability to heal him being Scully. Who else? She pulled him out of that black hole that was his prison cell as well as his mind and enlightened his existence by running with him. He seized every moment with her in the strong belief their world would collapse in 2012, and when it didn't, the hole he was falling into was even darker and deeper than the one he'd already been in. And this time, not even Scully could pull him out of it.

Mulder descended to his past so deeply, he's almost forgotten he's not alone on that porch. William pulls him back to the here and now, whining, "but daaad…"

He said it. He uttered the magic word. Dad. He is a dad. William's dad. And he has Scully in his life. Miraculously, she came back to him. Is this supposed to be the best time of his life now? Have the dark forces had enough with using him as a pawn in their sick plan to rule the world? He's having difficulties embracing the idea.

"What, William? The X-Files are closed and have been for many years. For the better, I guess." He lowers himself on the stairs again, not as close to his son as before.

William is not ready to give in yet. "Your lives are a mystery to me, dad! Yours and mom's! I mean, it seems to me you gave me up because of your work on those files, so wouldn't you say I have a right to know why that happened to me?" He gets really worked up. Now it's him who jolts up, towering over his father. He looks down on him when he goes on pleading his case. "I mean, fuck, if I lost my parents because of those shitty X-Files, I want to know all about them!"

"No expletives, young man!" Mulder says and is instantly dumbfounded by this unexpected outburst of fatherly teaching.

Father and son stare at each other for a moment, then both burst out laughing.

"Sorry," Mulder apologizes, "I don't know where that came from." He props his elbows up on his thighs and buries his head in his hands to keep it from spinning. "Jesus, I thought we closed this chapter years ago."

So many bitter emotions are resurfacing with a vengeance - the fear, the sorrow, the helplessness…the guilt. Somewhere in the back of his head Will's words still resonate.

"Did you really feel like you lost us? I was always under the impression that children who'd been given up loathed their birth parents for it," Mulder mumbles.

William resumes his place next to Mulder who's staring straight ahead, not able to look the boy in the eye. The teenager scoots close and slides his arm around his father's shoulder in a comforting gesture.

"Dad, I told you that I've been raised in the knowledge that I'd been given up for my own good. Walter and Helen have been very stubborn with this. Whenever I doubted myself, asking what was wrong with me that I'd been given up, they told me that I was perfectly okay and given up because I was loved and not because I wasn't. Eventually, I believed them, and as I became older, I was able to understand that only very special people, people who loved their child more than themselves, would do something like this."

Mulder swallows hard. He knows it had been one of Scully's worst fears that William grew up with the idea in his head that he was an unwanted child, unloved and uncared for, given up only to get rid of him. That he would never know how much he meant to his birth parents broke her heart.

At least, Scully had been able to give the child her love for ten long months, whereas he had only been allowed to pamper him for a few weeks. How much of an impression can a man make on his son in a few weeks? Especially if he hadn't known that it'd be all he'd get to spend with him, that he'd never see him again. As dreadful and deplorable as her situation was, Scully could at least seize those last days with him, could do all the things she wanted to do with him one last time. She could say goodbye to William. He was confronted with the fact his son was irretrievably lost at no notice. The missed opportunities, the time he wasted with reading or napping instead of nestling the baby up his chest or tickling his tummy, almost killed him.

"What I didn't understand," William continues, pulling Mulder out of his musings, "and still don't, is how it came to this? What happened to get you into a situation to be forced to give up your child? Obviously, neither of you has ever really gotten over it."

"No, we haven't," Mulder admits in a raspy voice. "Not me, nor you mom."

"Can't you tell me anything, dad? Anything that helps me understand what we had gotten into?"

We. 'We' is the key word. They had gotten William into the heap of shards their lives were at the time. "Don't you see, Will, that the sole reason Scully gave you up was to get you out of that mess? How can I pull you back in now? Knowledge can be an obligation, William. Your mother and I sacrificed a great deal of our lives for what we came to know, the greatest sacrifice of all being you. We don't want you to do the same."

William takes his time to let that sink in. He grinds his teeth. It's difficult for him to leave it there. "We're meeting in this fortress of a house with a fence and no network coverage. I wasn't allowed to tell my friends where I was going for the weekend, that I would be meeting my birth parents. Hell, I don't even know your home address or phone number! So the threat is still there, isn't it?"

"We're not sure. We simply don't want to take a chance," Mulder says powerlessly.

"Wouldn't it be good for me to know what to look out for? To protect myself?" As Mulder doesn't react, obviously lacking an answer, William probes further, "do my parents know what to look out for? Or who?"

"There's no reason for you to be looking out for anything or anyone. You're safe, Will. Your entire family is safe. Believe me, we discussed it a great deal after we got your letter. We evaluated the options and assessed all the risks. Scully would've never agreed to this get-together if it had involved putting you in danger. If we had been worried about your safety, we would've remained where we were…away from you."

William stares at Mulder. The last words hit the boy. His eyes darken and his lips are nothing but a thin line. For a moment Mulder fears he'd say 'I wished you had!', that the recurring pattern of his life once again proves to be well-founded. He's tainting the existence of every human being that crosses his path, and the closer the person is to his heart, the more dire the consequences.

But then his son's eyes assume that glorious blue color he sees in Scully's eyes when her heart is light, when she's cheerful and carefree. He hasn't been allowed to witness her in a state like that too often, the day William was born or when they got married being two of the rare occasions. He's more familiar with the darker shades of blue in her eyes, the blackish, dull blues. Blue in the color of a rain storm or a cloudy day, blue in the color of the deep blue troubled sea. But what he sees in the eyes transfixing him right now is the blue of a serene sky, the azure blue you'd expect at a Riviera beach or at the horizon on a sunny summer day.

"I'm so glad you didn't," William says eventually, voicing what his eyes have been telling Mulder already, grinning widely. "It's kinda cool to have two FBI agents as parents, even though I'm not allowed to tell anybody."

Mulder releases the breath he didn't even realize he was holding. "You know what's really cool?" he asks.

William shakes his head. Mulder turns to him, puts his hands on the boy's shoulders, and looks at him. "To have a son like you. I'm very proud of you." Also with a grin, he adds, "and I can't tell anyone either."

William averts his eyes, blushing profoundly. Mulder feels like telling him how much he loves him, how becoming his father had been the biggest adventure of his life, despite the pain the aftermath of his birth had brought along. How proud he really is to be a father, his father. But he knows he'd be embarrassing him. Kids his age don't really appreciate an open display of affection from their parents. So Mulder decides to keep his mouth shut and simply enjoys the physical closeness. He buries his nose in his son's hair and breathes in his smell.

From the corner of his eye, Mulder sees Scully step out onto the porch. She stops short in her tracks, one hand flies to her mouth, with the other she steadies herself against the banister. Her eyes connect with Mulder's and instantly fill with tears. The joy at having her son back in her life and seeing him in an embrace with his father is so obvious, it gives Mulder a sense of utter contentment. This is what he wanted to achieve, what he wanted to do for Scully. She deserved to be able to make peace with her decision to give William up for adoption. She deserved redemption for her sacrifice, and Mulder is more than happy that he'd managed to give her what she deserved.

But he has to be honest with himself. He's not only done it for her. He suffered from the loss of their son just like she had, felt like an orphaned parent like her, and thought he had, therefore, the right to pursue their reunion.

"Hey, Scully," Mulder makes her presence on the porch known to William, who instantly frees himself out of Mulder's embrace and hastily wipes the tears off his face with his sleeve. As willing as he was to let his father engage him in a hug, he's obviously unwilling to let his mother see his tears.

"Am I intruding?" Scully's voice is smooth as silk, full of love for her two men.

"Not at all," Mulder assures her. "C'mere, sit with us." He holds his now free arm out as an invitation.

Scully places herself on the steps next to William, the three of them sitting like roosting hens. "What were you talking about?" she asks.

"Will wants to know everything about the X-Files," Mulder answers to give William a bit more time to recompose himself.

Scully throws Mulder a worried look. He shakes his head to let her know he didn't tell him anything, at least none of the dreadful aspects of them. Scully nods back, their ability to communicate non-verbally sparing to voice any words. She picks up the thread to give William at least something. "Well, if it weren't for the X-Files, your father and I probably would've never met."

The boy looks up, his interest piqued. "How so?" He looks into his mother's face with still watery eyes. Scully suppresses the urge to cup his face and stroke his cheeks; she's still insecure about how close he wants her.

"I taught forensic pathology at the FBI Academy in Quantico. One day, I was summoned to the headquarters in DC and assigned to work with one Fox Mulder."

"Spooky Mulder, you wanted to say. And you were assigned to spy on me," Mulder interjects, "to provide them with the ammunition to shut the X-Files down!"

"Really, mom?"

"I was, but I didn't do it. Neither the spying, nor the debunking."

"No," Mulder agrees to her, shaking his head in agreement, "no, you didn't."

He's still amazed how fast he learned to trust her. In the course of their very first case in Bellefleur, Oregon, he already decided that this young, tiny, good-looking agent not only had a sharp wit and brisk pace but was also open-minded and willing to listen to him and his theories. He knew that as a working duo they would be like fire and ice - strict rationalism and fact-based science against improvisation guided by instinct and belief in the inexplicable. But he was looking forward to the partnership. He knew this woman would challenge him, would never let him take the easy path, that she would frustrate him, push him to the limit, even annoy him, but there was one thing she'd never do…betray him. She was a truthful, decent person and a good agent, something he couldn't say about all his partners in the past.

"So you didn't like each other in the beginning?" William misinterprets Mulder's testimony.

Scully laughs. "Well, let's say we had our preconceptions about each other, but you know, in our business, you have to learn to trust your partner quickly, otherwise you get into trouble. If you can't rely blindly on the person behind you, they can't be your partner."

"And you learned to trust each other quickly," William concludes.

Mulder throws Scully a knowing look above William's head. "I remember pouring my heart out to you on our very first case, in that dark motel room. You were lying on the bed and I was sitting on the floor, telling you about my sister."

William's jaw drops. "You shared a room on your very first case?"

Scully hurries to set things right. "We weren't sharing a room, I'd just gone over to Mulder's room because I was worried about some marks on my back and wanted him to have a look at them. We had separate rooms, of course," she assures.

"Yeah, we always had separate rooms. Could've saved the Bureau a whole lot of money on travel expenses from a certain point on onward, but your mother was very compliant when it came to sticking to the rules, and the FBI was very clear when it came to interaction between male and female partners out in the field. Actually, showing up in my room after 8pm…in a robe…already was a violation." He winks at William.

"Mulder!"

"What? Isn't it true that you came to me in nothing but your underwear and a thin red robe, exposing your lower back and asking me to look at you?"

Scully gasps and William frantically covers his ears. "Too much information, guys!"

"I was scared to death about what those marks were, what was I supposed to do?" Scully hisses through gritted teeth.

William is obviously amused by his parents' banter but also thankful to get at least some insight into what their lives used to be, even though they are not willing to tell him anything about their cases.

"I take it you trusted him already, mom!"

Scully's features soften. She shares a loving gaze with Mulder, telling both him and her son, "You're right, Will, I did. I trusted him with my life."

"I would've given mine for you," Mulder says, leaving no doubt he means it.

"Wow," William mutters, "sounds like you were a dream couple from the start."

Scully bursts out into a laugh. "Uh, not really, Will!"

"Oh, come on, Scully! They referred to us as Mr. and Mrs. Spooky! If that's not a name for a dream couple, I don't know what is!"

William snorts with laughter.

"You can't be serious, Mulder! We argued over almost every case! You with your tendency to go with wild theories making it impossible to approach any matter rationally and target-oriented."

"And you refusing to think outside the box with your stubborn, smart, pretty, little redhead of yours!" With his last remark, Mulder earns himself the famous Scully eye-roll-and-smirk, but continues nonetheless. "The solve rate skyrocketed as soon as we started working together."

"Going off from where? Zero percent?"

"No!"

"From where, Mulder?" Scully insists, ignoring his obvious displeasure at speaking of the numbers.

"Eight," he admits meekly.

"Exactly. The solve rate of the X-Files was eight percent. Any double digit percentage would be considered a major improvement."

"It was eight point seven, actually, so practically nine. That's almost a double digit, Scully," Mulder pouts. By the end of their first year, they had a solve rate of 75 percent for heaven's sake. They were way above the Bureau average. No matter where they started from - 8, 9 or 10 percent - it was a major improvement, only based on the perfect way they worked together.

Scully is still in a bantering mood. She blows a strand of hair out of her face, throwing her head back in annoyance. "I'm familiar with the rules of rounding up decimal digits, but thank you for clearing that up for me anyway, Mulder!"

William snorts again. "You two are just too cute," he tells them.

"Cute?" Mulder and Scully both cry out in unison, leaving an aghast question mark so huge, William feels the need to elaborate. He's also never skipped out on a verbal duel.

"Funny? Crazy? Loony?" he supplies more adjectives. "Hilarious? Amusing? Entertaining?… Some more? Let's see…Droll? Comical?"

"Great, Mulder! Our son thinks we're some kind of silly lunatics," Scully sighs.

"But he's very eloquent with an ample vocabulary at hand, so it seems," Mulder adds.

"I didn't say you were silly lunatics, mom! Rather a bit freaky maybe, but also sweet in a way. That banter was just immensely funny." He can't hold back another chuckle. After he recomposed himself, being stared at by his speechless parents, he continues in a more serious fashion. "I think you were great partners, both in your professional lives and in your personal lives. I guess you still are. You seem to be like the perfect opposites to each other, but also complementing the other like two very unique pieces of a ten thousand piece jigsaw puzzle that need to be assembled to complete the whole picture. Maybe that's why you've gotten along so well all this time."

Mulder's heart aches because of how well William has understood their dynamics, but it also aches because he has to think back to the time they didn't get along so very well, when the pieces wouldn't fit anymore, no matter how hard they tried to put them together. It was the time his depression had made him a different man, a man who didn't care for her anymore how he used to, who didn't bother pushing her away. A man who didn't trust her anymore.

"I once called your mother my touchstone, William, but there was a time I had forgotten all about it," Mulder shows Scully his contrite face, "and I screwed it up. But…" He licks his lips, then bites the lower one. He inhales deeply. Then, after a short moment of complete stillness, he claps his hands on his thighs and gets up. "…that's in the past. We're here now. Together. With you, Will. And I can't imagine wanting to be anywhere or with anybody else."

William and Scully look at each other for a short moment, then rise also.

"You're right, Mulder. Why muse over past conduct, when what we have right now is just perfect?" She beams at William and puts her arm around her son's waist. Timidly at first, but with more determination when she realizes he lets it happen. "Helen said she wanted to bake some chocolate muffins. Considering how wonderful she cooks, I take it she's a wonderful baker as well."

"Oh, yes!" William exclaims. "Her chocolate muffins are the best! They taste heavenly right out of the oven when the core is still molten," he raves.

"Then why don't we go inside and have a look whether there are some already?" Scully suggests. "I bet you wouldn't say no to boosting your blood sugar level a bit either, Mulder, would you?"

"Nope," Mulder agrees.

"I hope there's some whipped cream, too," William says. "With those chocolate muffins covered with whipped cream and a cup of hot cocoa in front of you, you feel like you're in paradise."

"What are we waiting for then?" Mulder asks, leading the way. When he reaches the knob of the front door with his outstretched hand, William stops in his tracks.

"Uhm, there's one thing I want you to know first." He straightens his back and looks at Scully and Mulder who have turned around, both looking at him with questioning eyes, unsure what to expect.

"What is it, Will?" Mulder asks, and when they don't get an answer, Scully adds a worried, "William?"

"I want you to know that I…I mean, that you…." He coughs and shifts his weight from one foot to the other.

Mulder and Scully share a quick look. She raises her left eyebrow, he shakes his head and shrugs.

"You can tell us everything. Come on, spit it out," Scully tries to encourage him.

William takes a deep inhale once again, then he looks from one to the other and back. "You told me you had to trust each other quickly. I just want you to know that I decided to do the same." He waits a moment for his birth parents' reaction, but as they seem to be petrified, he continues. "I trust you when you tell me that I shouldn't inquire further about the X-Files. I trust you when you tell me that I shouldn't worry about whatever was a threat then is still a threat now. I trust you when you tell me that you protect me. Me, and Walter and Helen."

Mulder lets go of the door knob and takes two strides to close the distance between himself and the boy. He puts his hands on William's shoulders, and says, "It's an honor you place your trust in us, and I swear to God, we will never betray it." He swallows hard. And then he says it, dares to say it although he's terrified he's pushing too hard. "We love you, son."

For a moment, a deafening silence surrounds them. Mulder holds his breath in anticipation of William's reaction, Scully works hard to keep the tears at bay.

After what seems to be an eternity to the somewhat anxious adults, William eventually saves them from their agony. "I love you, too, dad. And you mom," he says loudly and clearly, "you're my second set of parents."

Mulder could swear he hears church bells chiming somewhere in the distance. Has his son really just said that he loved him? He didn't say that he despised him, loathed him, wished he'd never met him. No. The son who he had so many problems with conceding him a place in his life when he was still cared for in his mother's womb said he loved him. Mulder feels the earth move beneath him.

It's Scully yet again who steadies him, helps him to cope with this moment in time which is in line with the moment he learned of her cancer having gone into remission, when she laid baby William into his arms, and when she accepted his proposal. He feels her hand sliding around his waist, pulling him toward her. At the same time, she motions for William to join them in their group hug.

"I had already abandoned all hope of ever being able to hold both of you in my arms. I can't tell you how much this means to me." Her voice is surprisingly calm and serene.

Both the older as well as the younger of the two men give in to the emotional moment, bend down and rest their heads on the shoulder of the woman who is so much shorter than them. Despite her small frame, she's like a shield between them, helping them to mask how close to tears they actually are. As is always the case, when push comes to shove, women are so much more the master, or more precisely, the mistress of the situation than men.

Mulder allows himself to be infected by her elation.

Scully. His Scully.

She's always been his and will be forever more. He's forgotten by now what his life was even like before he met her. It's almost as if he hadn't existed before she entered his hemisphere.

And now, they are a set of three. Fox, Dana, and William. His family. The Mulders.

How wonderful life is, he thinks and isn't even aware that for the first time since Samantha was taken, he looks into the future utterly optimistic and carefree. He's not worried about a conspiracy, he's not racking his brain about alien-human hybrids, he's not even wasting a single thought about Cancer Man. His heart is light as a feather. He's simply and purely happy.

When they break apart, Mulder looks into two identical sets of crystal clear blue eyes and he sees his whole world reflected in them. This is all he ever needed, all he ever wanted. Nothing else but having the two most important persons, actually the only two important persons in his life with him at a place where nothing and nobody is threatening them.

The three of them remain motionless for a moment, holding hands on the porch. Nobody knows what to say, as there are no words to do justice to the magnitude of this moment. It's Scully who finally breaks the tension.

"As nice as this is, boys, I smell chocolate!" she says, displaying a mischievous grin.

"Me, too," William chimes in. "I'll ask mom for some whipped cream and hot chocolate."

The boy severs their connection, but not without a toothy grin on his face. Mulder looks after his son as he disappears inside the house. He's held on to Scully and is taking her other hand now that he is turning to face her.

"Fox?" Scully says when their eyes lock, calling him Fox, maybe for as much as the fifth time in his life.

"Yes?"

"I love you." She throws him a wonderful smile. One that reaches her eyes and lets them shine in the most beautiful color he's ever seen.

"I love you, too, Dana."

She holds out her hand. "Let's go inside and have some chocolate."

He nods, takes her hand and kisses the back of it. He lets her lead him them, following her willingly.

Everywhere.


End file.
